Mattel’s virtual world Barbie Girls hit the 3million user mark in its first 60 days and is growing at the rate of 50,000 new users a day, according to a report from the Scientific American.
To put that in perspective, Second Life took 3 years to get to 1 million registered users. At its current growth rate, Barbie Girls should pass the number of Second Life registered users between November and January based on Second Life’s existing growth rate. Barbie Girls would also pass World of Warcraft around the same time as well*.
Barbie Girls allows users to customize Barbie dolls, dress them up, create virtual homes, adopt pets and chat with other users. The service is free to play with a revenue model focused on the purchase of virtual goods.
Saying this is a crowded space is probably now an understatement. Competitors include Cyworld, Zwinktopia, Stardoll, Haboo Hotel, Web Kinz, Club Penguin, Gaia Online, Neopets and others.
It would be easy to dismiss an offering like Barbie Girls (feminists are probably going to roll their eyes at the whole concept) and yet 3 million registered users in 60 days does say one very, very clear thing: virtual worlds are going mainstream and the user base is dramatically shifting from being predominantly male to majority female. That shift isn’t quite as important now as it will be in the next 5-10 years as those playing Barbie Girls grow into adults; simply the next generation of online gaming and virtual world users will not be dominated by men.
*WOW figures of 8.5million users are paying, regular users where as the Barbie Girls figure would be registered users as opposed to regular players. Barbie may have a much lower regular player figure as Second Life does.
(in part via World in Motion)
Duncan, I suspect that rate doesn’t mean much. 60 * 50,000 = 3,000,000. That’s probably where the number came from.
any info on what mattel has done to market this site? or this growth viral in nature.
Noah
good point on the growth rate.
Sean
not sure to be honest, I’d never seen it before today despite TechCrunch covering the space fairly heavily. I’ll see what I can dig up.
how about making beer man game for kids?
you can make your own drunken characters and customize beer, wear white t-shirt, burb, siting on coach watch TV, nascar, sleep, and slapping beautiful wife’s butt to do more work. Beer wife will do work such as cooking, washing dish, quit complainting, buy more beers, shoot farm animals for food, get use to beer smell, and buys less clothes.
You can fly many places to compete beerfest.
I think Niche games like this will end up being more popular that games like second life. I have no interest in second life, but if there was something that was a little more specific that was interesting to me I might be motivated to try it.
These virtual worlds should allow users to travel to other virtual worlds through special “gates”. Imagine being able to pop into Barbieland (or wherever!) via Second Life, for example. This would foster a sense of cooperation rather than competition among the different worlds that are emerging.
This looks like a really pink version of The Sims Online. Maybe EA was onto something after all…
A new generation of web users will be the first to completely grow up on the Web in these peer-to-peer playgrounds for the tech savvy toddler and tween set. For the net’s youngest users, new concepts like Second Life will feel like second nature.
On whole, a bit of a stretch. The second point, in particular, is quite a jump. So one or a couple of virtual worlds targeted towards women explode and it’s now “very,very” clear that the majority of VW users will be female? Not saying you’re wrong, necessarily (I guess you have 50/50 odds on being right there :), but I just don’t follow how you can make such a firm and final claim on a market that’s so nascient.
And by “nascient” I mean, of course, “nascent”.
out of the 3M users, lol - how many of those accounts are pedophiles?
that growth rate although large, is not that shocking - considering it’s part of the Mattel toy co. label. all Matel has to do is slap that link on all it’s toy packages and advertisements.
voila! an avalanche of users in a couple of days
The important aspects of this growth is the marketing strategies of the barbie dolls. Startegies are also customise according to different countries and cultures. Many other competitors can also start a new segment for kids (boyz) provided fueles with sound strategies.
Character like Harry Porter is in craze for last so many years…..There are lot of fans for this character as well.
More than anything else, I think the rapid growth of Barbie Girls indicates that established brands have significant advantages when releasing Web 2.0 services. Because the technology behind Web 2.0 services has essentially become commoditized, success comes through marketing and branding. Obviously established brands can leverage their brands to more effectively market and brand new offerings. In my blog post, I detail some of the key requirements for brands looking to successfully build a Web 2.0 service by leveraging their existing brands.
http://www.drama20show.com/200.....in-web-20/
I really doubt their figures are accurate. They are 4,439 in Alexa and compete says they got 600,000 visitors in June. In order to get 50,000 registered users per day they’d need at least 150,000 visitors per day. Just not happening.
The information is secondhand from a Mattel rep, reported by a blogger. “Last night at the Digital Life preview a Mattel rep–who, just to make the conversation extra surreal, actually looked sort of like Barbie–told me that 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.”
Just not correct.
kayvaan
Try visiting most (indeed all) of those virtual world sites I mentioned in the post, and tell me which ones appeal to boys…then you’ll understand where I’m coming from.
Ryan
The source wasn’t just some unknown blogger who overheard a chinese whisper, this was a guy writing for the Scientific American who had it direct from someone at the company…that’s as good a source as any in any newspaper or MSM outlet.
It has come to my attention that people love Duncan bashing on TC haha. While some of you are a little ambitious and want to take Duncan’s place and feel that you are more well suited, show him some respect. He has always defended himself well. If you need to make a point I think you guys should just make it w/o attacking Duncan for making the posting. We’ve been taught to not believe everything we see, read, or hear, so why is it that you feel the need to clarify things with an attack? If you have something to say please make it constructive. I love reading the the TC comments from other readers, but lately it’s been a lot of Duncan bashing. He’s simply relaying what he heard. TC is a blog after all and Duncan is entitled to his interpretation and opinion.
While those figures reported are astounding, I do believe that we need to figure out who these users are that are signing up. The only people I can think of that would sign up for a Barbie virtual world are young girls no older than 16. While other sites and virtual worlds like Second-Life struggle to draw an audience, Barbie has a certain advantage when targeting a younger age group. The younger age group has far less exposure to things full grown adults are. Things such as responsibilities, we try to keep our brains open to take in entertainment, tech, worry about our credit cards, bills, our girlfriends, and what not, while the younger generation only thinks about school the next day, watching cartoons, and Barbie. Being that they are now exposed to the internet, the first thing they think about is probably searching for Barbie or joining Barbie on a virtual world, right? Just my take on things.
3m @ a few days might spell one thing: an exponential growth, high ad sales, bursts and, ultimately, ‘normal growth’ for the bg
Well, it goes to show you the power of developing an on-line community experiences, with a targeted demographic of people who love to recommend it to their friends. And its already supported with decades of branding.
The average American probably doesn’t know about Second Life yet. Because parents aren’t watching their kids use it. Parents still don’t know about Friendster, but MySpace is in Oprah-world… which I think adds to the kids’ lure Facebook: “Mom, I AM NOT ON MySpace!!!” Technically, they are right.
While BarbieGirls goes after a younger population, it sounds like a better demo than Disney’s 2.0 ambitions.
~ Vikram Rajan
PersonalBrandMarketing.com
How does this compare to StarDoll (http://www.stardoll.com), which you’ve commented on in the past? If I recall correctly, StarDoll was doing well…
I like having a smaller focuse on a virtual world than a “Whole - nother life”
I mean if I go to 2nd life its cause I have nothing to do in this 1 …
- if I have nothing to do in this 1 what can I do there?
- the Barbie world - is just a logical extension of the real barbie world that kids use when they “play barbies”
-RB
Well it’s a huge trend in the toy industry at the moment to tie offline toys into online, interactive worlds. The sites grow to enormous sizes quickly because the offline toys drive a huge part of the online traffic.
I would not count the sites you listed as Barbie’s competitors, but Webkinz, Bella Sara, Club Penguin, etc.
“The only people I can think of that would sign up for a Barbie virtual world are young girls no older than 16″
As a parent of 4 - Barbie is popular with the very young crowd (ages 2 to 6, maybe 7 years) and then she’s not cool anymore. Club Penguin is one of the sites bridging the gap and then kids pretty much they want a more grown-up-ish site to visit after they hit age 10 or 11. Sad but true!
Duncan–I was not questioning the post–you are right regarding the source. I am just questioning whether or not the original source was overhyping or using fuzzy numbers (like counting total visitors as users instead of registered members) . There just doesn’t seem to be a way that they really have 3,000,000 registered users when they are 4,000+ (last day) in Alexa and 3,000+ in Compete unless they are sending traffic through a different URL to get the visitors. I wonder if ComScore has stats.
@ryan.
you can’t use alexa numbers for barbie. alexa comes standard in netscape and mozilla browsers — decidedly NOT the barbie crowd — or through an optional, downloaded add-in for internet explorer.
alexa is good for general compares between nerd-core and nerd-core. not, i repeat, not nerd-core and mainstream. the data it collects does not come from your typical mainstreamer’s browser. meaning, mainstreamer’s and firefox users aren’t necessarily one in the same.
m3mnoch.
i want one really
are they going to make it so boys can play
I love this site soooooo much it is soo fun and you will never get of it tell they kick you off
how u doin
it is not fair!that is a cool website and you have a have a barbie girl to go to Club Beauty!and do any of u guys know a code?
and can you guys post your usernames?i am SpunkyGirl1997