This week, the biggest bit of news in the online world industry didn’t come from E3 in Los Angeles; no, it emanated from the DigitalLife conference in New York City, as reported on the blog of Scientific American, of all things.

“…in the first 60 days of its existence, the new online virtual world Barbie Girls has signed up three million members, and they’re adding new ones at the rate of 50,000 a day.”

By contrast, it took World of Warcraft four months to reach just half that amount. Yes, largely an apples-to-Orcs comparison, but in terms of eyeballs, attention, and enthusiasm, still a fair one.

The overarching point is how much online worlds have come to be dominated by pre-adults. The GigaOM Top Ten MMO list is roughly half kid-oriented virtual worlds – Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, Webkinz, Gaia Online, and arguably RuneScape – and doesn’t even include sites like Zwinky, NeoPets, and other child-centric social networks with MMO/avatar-based elements.

One of the interesting conclusions in the article is that the subscription model may be in decline.



  1. Angel H. Wong says:

    “in the first 60 days of its existence, the new online virtual world Barbie Girls has signed up three million members, and they’re adding new ones at the rate of 50,000 a day.”

    And 90% of them are middleaged men.

  2. Dauragon88 says:

    It makes sense. Now a days practically every kid has his/her own computer and some kind of internet connection. Heh, I remember runescape. Those were good days 😀

  3. OhForTheLoveOf says:

    #1 – Being a middle aged man, I know a metric fuckton of middle aged men… and while no doubt some of them are burdened with truly embarrassing deviencies… I doubt there are that many who get their jollies off Barbie Dolls…

    Aside from Smithers…

  4. Mister Justin says:

    3,

    It’s all about the poaching…

  5. OhForTheLoveOf says:

    #4 – Now I am really confused… What do eggs have to do with perverted Barbie men?

  6. BubbaRay says:

    #3, OFTLO, “metric f**kton”, now that is a measurement with which most are totally unfamiliar. (There are a MegaF**kton (qv.) of people who need education about this little known unit): 🙂

    http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1398588

  7. Mister Justin says:

    5,

    I’m guessing they\re hoping for some underdone eggs… Weren’t expecting that, were ya!

  8. smartalix says:

    These poor kids are already caught. The company will now track them and pimp their identities to advertisers for the rest of their lives.

  9. hhopper says:

    From Urban Dictionary – “More properly, “Metric Fucktonne.” The Fuckton is the Imperial standard for the measurement of fuckweight, while the Fucktonne, in contrast, constitutes the Metric measure of fuckmass.

    Generally used to imply superlative quantity with the Metric standard included to emphasise this point. The inclusion of the term is, however, fundamentally a misuse of that standard, as the Imperial Fuckton (2000 Imperial Fuckpounds) denotes a slightly greater measure of fuckweight within Earth’s gravitational pull than does the Metric Fuckton (1000 Metric Fuckilograms).”

  10. docred says:

    #9…one correction…I believe there are actually 2.2 fuckpounds in a fuckilogram, so the metric fuckton (or fucktonne if you will) would actually be slighty greater.

    That being said….I find I don’t really give a crapload, but…….thats a whole other story

  11. tallwookie says:

    What I wanna know is how many of these so-called “members” are of the toys’ *actual target age group* – and how many are mothers & grandmothers playing around with virtual dolls???

    remember that the mattel brand is very old – and they’ve been selling barbie dolls almost from day 1.

  12. Yeah I Said It! says:

    #1 – Welcome to the Internet, where the men are men, women are men, and children are cops.


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