Children flock to social networks

More than a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds in the UK have a profile on a social network, research shows.

More than a fifth of people in the UK aged 16 and over have an online profile, the Ofcom survey showed.

Most sites, such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook, set a minimum age of
between 13 and 14 to create a profile but none actively enforce the age
limit.

Ofcom's survey of 5,000 adults and 3,000 children found 49% of those aged between eight and 17 have a profile.

The Home Office has been working with social networking firms and is
expected to publish a set of guidelines for the sites around best
practice, security and privacy on Friday.

The report is expected to recommend that profiles created by
children are set to private by default, or are only viewable by friends
nominated by the user.

It also suggests that social sites maintain a distinct contact page
listing contact numbers, such as 999, children can use to get help.

The Home Office guidelines are set to encourage social networking sites
to investigate age verification technologies and to give better
signposting to users about privacy settings, and warnings about the
implications of posting personal details.

Forty-one per cent of children had set their profile so that it was visible to anyone, according to the report.

But 16% of parents admitted they did not know if their child's profile could be seen or not by strangers.

Article Link (BBC)

How many users on Second Life?

In the French show 'Arrêt sur Images' (a TV show that analyzes other TV shows) which aired on April 22, 2007, Nicolas Barrial, founder of Extralab and Second Life's Fr said:
Second Life has over 5m subscribers, but that's a number tally over the last 2 or 3 years. In reality, most subscribers haven't returned to Sefcond Life. At any one time, only 30,000 users are connected worldwide.
Journalist Luc Peillon investigated money making in Second Life and said those that do business there actually invest large amounts of real-life money and time.
Some real-estate agents hire avatars to close deals and earn 5% on the transactions.
Most Linden Dollars money stays in Second Life, but a some are converted back to real-life money.
Article Link (France 5 TV)

Time to play, money to spend

Webkinz and Club Penguin struck gold by attracting millions of kids to their online worlds and keeping them there. What makes their sites so sticky?


Ganz's Webkinz.com and a site called Club Penguin were early entries into this market, but they've been joined this year by the giants of tween marketing: Disney (Charts) and Nickelodeon (Charts). What started as an Internet sideline for a plush-toy company is shaping up as a battle for the hearts and minds of a generation.

It's a battle that bears watching by anybody interested in making money on the Web, because once children aim their browsers at one of these virtual worlds, they tend to stay there, not just for a few minutes but for hours at a time. The sites are, in the jargon of the webmaster, extraordinarily sticky.

Imagine Beanie Babies in cyberspace and you have a pretty good picture of what Ganz is up to. The company sells its Webkinz--special-edition plush toys with names like Googles, Cheeky Monkey, and Love Puppy--for $10 to $12.50 apiece.

It's a model that can be enormously seductive. Ganz reports that toy buyers have snapped up more than 2 million Webkinz pets since April 2005 and better than 1 million users have registered online. More than $20 million in retail sales in less than 24 months is considered pretty good money in the plush-toy business. Ganz is privately held and won't disclose its profit, but to put that growth rate in perspective, it took Second Life three years to attract the first 1 million "residents" to its virtual universe.

traffic has mushroomed. Club Penguin saw 2.9 million unique visitors in January, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, up from just 705,000 in March 2006.

This is an important feature: Webkinz puts strict limits on how much time kids can spend on any activity--a "leave 'em wanting more" strategy that is one of the secrets of the site's success. Webkinz's traffic ballooned from 1.1 million unique visitors in November to 1.9 million in December. Moreover, kids spent an average of two hours and eight minutes per visit on Webkinz between April 2006 and January 2007. (YouTube, by contrast, averaged 32 minutes per visit during the same period, while Club Penguin averaged 54.)

Club Penguin and Webkinz trumpet their sites as safe, ad-free environments. Disney and Nickelodeon are more frankly commercial and--in a big shift--ad-supported. Marketing to kids is always tricky; no one wants to be seen shilling to children. And whether the kids will buy the branded content, or the products advertised, remains to be seen.

But the biggest question hovering over this whole market is what the kids will want in the future--like next week. The most carefully crafted strategies can be blown up by an overnight shift in whatever adolescents deem cool.

Just ask Crandall. She can reel off a dozen reasons she now prefers Webkinz to Club Penguin but doesn't hesitate when asked how she finds the hottest new games. It's easy, she says. She asks her friend Danielle.

Article Link

PlayPhone and Bandai America Hatch Tamagotchi-Branded Mobile Phone for Kids

Bandai's original Tamagotchi virtual pet has sold more than 40 million units worldwide, with more than 12 million in the U.S. and Canada. Not only did the original toy spur a pop culture phenomenon, but also created a new toy category and prompted countless imitations. During its peak, 15 Tamagotchi units were sold every minute in the U.S. and Canada.

Unique to the Tamagotchi prepaid mobile phone is PlayPhone's ability to convert users' prepaid airtime minutes into mobile content credits that can be used on the TamaPhone.com Web site. Kids will be able to further customize their Tamagotchi phone with popular wallpaper, ringtones and games without having to use their parent's credit card.

"The Tamagotchi phone will be the must-have accessory for every kid this summer," said Masao Ohata, vice president of Network Entertainment for Bandai America. "Instead of having two separate electronics, the Tamagotchi phone combines the classic virtual pet with what every kid already wants-a phone of their very own."
Article Link

Fuzzy Critters With High Prices Offer Lesson in New Concepts

The cuddly stuffed animals, which are in exceedingly high demand among the elementary school set, have also gained notice among Internet executives for their ability to bridge the online and offline worlds. And although no one expects others to replicate the breakaway success of Webkinz in, say, the automotive industry, analysts said there are many lessons to be learned from these plush toys.

Ganz, which introduced Webkinz in April 2005, stopped publicly commenting on sales last year as the toys approached the 1 million mark. Since then, their popularity has spiked, with stores across the nation struggling to maintain inventory and eBay sellers demanding a steep premium for certain animals, like Sherbet the rabbit, which sold last week for about $40. Some discontinued Webkinz have been sold on eBay for well over $100, and an eBay auction for a dog and cat set that closed yesterday attracted a winning bid of $1,525.


Article Link

Virtual worlds are 'worth $1bn'

Revenues from subscriptions to MMOGs will hit $1.5bn by 2011, said [Mr Harding-Rolls].

But the growth in MMOGs remains limited compared to developing markets such as video on demand, which is expected to be worth $11.4bn from revenues in four years' time.

Subscription MMOGs still dominate the market, accounting for 87% of all revenues, said the report, which examines the market only for North America and Europe.

World of Warcraft, which has eight million subscribers, has more than a 50% share of that particular market.

More than 10 million people will subscribe to MMOGs by 2011, and many millions more will play online games driven by other payment schemes, such as advertising and virtual purchases, the research report by analysts Screen Digest predicted.

Games such as World of Warcraft and worlds like Habbo Hotel are fast becoming "significant platforms" in the converged media world, the report said.

Mr Harding-Rolls said a number of new MMOG genres were emerging, including:

• Virtual world building games, such as Second Life
• Virtual pet rearing games, such as Neo pets
• More casual MMO puzzle games
• Sports games in which you have to buy items and build up your character

Article Link (BBC)

Virtual World Websites

This is a (partial) list websites dedicated to children social networking:

www.clubpenguin.com

www.zula.com

www.tystoybox.com

www.mondomedia.com (gay theme)

Virtual-World Branding: For Real?

Virtual worlds may sound like a sci-fi concept, but they are rapidly becoming the place to be for young people in love with these 3D Internet landscapes. A cross between gaming and anime, virtual worlds such as There.com, Second Life, and Cyworld are emerging as places not only to create and hang out as an altar-ego avatar, but to engage in go

Article Link

Plush pet gets a life: Webkinz craze unites physical, online worlds

Webkinz toys sell for around $10, and smaller versions, called Lil' Kinz, retail for around $7.50, Ms. McVeigh said. Each Webkinz comes with a free one-year membership to the Web site, which can only be extended by buying another toy.

Industry insiders are taking note. Webkinz won the Toy of the Year Award in the Specialty Toy category at the annual Toy Industry Toy of the Year Awards earlier this month.

"Webkinz are creating a new phenomenon in the toy industry that crosses over gender boundaries and retail outlets," said Reyne Rice, toy trends specialist for the Toy Industry Association, the trade organization for North American toy manufacturers.

It's also part of a trend toward developing safe online portals for kids to satisfy concerned parents who want their kids to be tech-savvy but safe, she said.

Ganz won't say how many Webkinz units are made or sold, but Ms. McVeigh said the Web site has more than 1 million members.

Kids like Mrs. Martin's 9-year-old son, William Beebe, keep those figures going up. At last count, he had 17 and rising.

"My friend has 45," he said.

Article Link

It's Teddy Bear, Version 2.0

In real life, all that 10-year-old Megan Leffew's cuddly stuffed animals can do is sit on her bed in her room in Rockville. But online, they can play air hockey, whip up a fish-and-chips dinner or take a dip in a hot tub.

They are called Webkinz, huggable, plush toys with elaborate virtual lives that spotlight how children's play is changing, moving effortlessly between the real world and the Web. And in less than two years, they have become must-have items for tech-savvy 'tweeners.

Article Link

Online communities, virtual worlds popular among the younger set

(CP) - There was once a time when all that was needed to create a virtual world for a child was an active imagination.

Now, it takes a click of a mouse. Hundreds of thousands of Canadian children are signing up to online social networking communities where they can chat, play games and create virtual worlds. But unlike sites like Myspace or Friendster, which encourage members to leave personal information on their profiles, social websites for the younger set do the exact opposite.

Article Link