This post about Stardoll, a social digital doll-building site, impressed me by several points.
- Size: "Stardoll announced yesterday that it had reached ten million registered members since its launch a year ago. With six million monthly uniques..."
- Gender: "...94% of whom are are teen and tween girls, Stardoll is leading Comscore's rankings in the 9-17 female demographic."
- and this subtle point about a way of supporting online communities: "We spoke with CEO Mattias Miksche in July to discuss the importance of avatars versus virtual worlds, and he emphasized the importance of identity and realism over immersiveness." (emphases added)
You see this one about Second Life adding identity verification? http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2007/08/second-life-add.html
That seems like a potentially big step in the evolution of that place.
Posted by: Bill Walker | September 03, 2007 at 00:54
Both of my girls have been using Stardoll regularly, since it was paperdollheaven.
One of the things that I have learned from it is that children never tire of repetitive activity that they find interesting in some way. I look at it and think that it looks interesting for 3 or 4 minutes. They play with it for hours.
The only thing that has successfully drawn them away from it is Club Penguin :)
Posted by: Owen Kelly | September 03, 2007 at 04:41