Slashdot Mirror
NeoPets Sale Creates Ripples
The sale of Neopets to MTV earlier this week has created an interest in how the "tiny" site could go for so much. Terra Nova has a look at the stickyness of the site and its reality as a virtual space. Alice discusses the reasons behind the price tag, based on the outlook of a venture capitalist. From the Wonderland blog: "Here we have one of the most successful pieces of social software ever, so successful that it is being purchased by a major media company for $160-million, and the story is getting remarkably little play in social software circles.
Why is the acquisition interesting? "
Here's a cold one for ya.
Other then 13 year old girls, who uses Neopets anymore? It's only fitting MTV bought it.
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Four comments counting this... way NOT to go.
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
I've always been up to date on current events, especially in tech, but I've never heard of this site before in my life. How long has it been around?
Though I've never understood what the deal is with Pokemon either, and this looks like similar stuff.
I wonder if this'll mean more or less spam for me.
Look, I was using the nickname "Scorchio" before them. It came from The Fast Show, and I thought it was an apt name to describe the burnt up heap of bones I regularly became when getting pwned at Quake.
I don't play neopets, I never have, and I have no intention of starting, despite the regular invites I kept receiving until I blocked neopets.com.
Grumble, whine, etc.
I know on Furcadia, the most frequent thing players trade with each other for our virtual items is Neopoints (the "money" of Neopets). Maybe someday we'll be "hip" enough that a big corporation will try to buy us, and we can say no. I have to confess though, I've often considered contacting them about making a more interactive Neopets game based on our engine technology, which they could add to their site. We run a free game too, and average $10-$20 per regular user per year in sales of optional addon items, which is mostly profit (cost of goods on virtual items being what it is).
If Viacom can find a way to bring in that much revenue per user, through advertising sales or any other way, then the $160 million price tag to acquire 25 million customers starts to look pretty cheap. Certainly less dollars per customer acquired ($6.40) than AOL was burning through at it's fast-spending peak of its growth some years back.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
I suppose the purchase of NeoPets bodes well for the future of Gaiaonline as well. My 12yo daughter used to be a big NeoPets fan, but she's moved on to Gaiaonline because NeoPets isn't considered to be cool anymore. At least it's not cool to her crowd. So if MTV and others are on the hunt for her demographic, I suppose they'll be knocking on Gaiaonline's door next. I find these sites very interesting in that they do a pretty good job of incentifying people to stay on the site and be social without using a lot of fancy tech. These are not hard core gamer sites, no 3D accelerators required! But honestly, I don't really see how they can make money given the cost of maintaining the sites and the difficulty of converting free internet content into paid services. NeoPets has a number of product licensing deals, but I'd never heard that they were making a big profit. So being bought out as a marketing tool by MTV is actually a pretty happy ending for them.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I don't let my son watch MTV because of all the losers that are on it. He gets enough of that at school so now I need to worry what MTV is going to do with this site.
He has been on Neopets early on and now at 13, he is very proficient at the site. It has addictive qualities to it and I must say that it is one of the most successful sites I know of and that includes the ebays of the world. It does not have that Slashdot effect because it does not influence other site, but it does have a major influence on those who are on it. I can always track back whatever my son asks for to things that I see in his history on the computer.
This is a big deal.
"NeoPets Sale Creates Ripples..." In the space-time continuum! Quick, follow them into the temporal flux before they assimilate Earth!
Do the editors actually follow the links that they blurb about? The only "discussion" on Alice's site is "Expect more games-meets-social-software soon, I expect, and it's about time too." - the rest of the posting is simply an "I found this interesting" copy/paste from the original Infectious Greed blog entry.
From the Wonderland blog: "Here we have one of the most successful..."No, that would be from the Infectious Greed blog. (It's "from" the Wonderland blog only in the sense that the entire Infectious Greed blog entry was posted in the Wonderland blog.)
Don't get me wrong... I am glad that at least this wasn't a posting of a seven year old video game contest interview, but as someone pointed out regarding that earlier posting, if the editors aren't even going to bother summarizing the postings correctly, why even bother with the blurb and just toss us a page full of links?This should get amusing when MTV starts charging for some (or all) content, and the population starts dwindling. I know a lot of Neopets addicts, so seeing how this plays out should prove humorous.
If I had a kid, I'd block MTV too and see if I could import that Candian music channel for him or maybe EuroMTV would be ok since from what I've heard they still play music. Maybe I could get him/her re-runs of Liquid Television or Amped.
I mean... My parents disaproved of me watching MTV videos back in the early 90's with those "provocative" NIN songs and various other music videos, but the shallow ass reality crap they have now just justifies people in to being whiney attention jackasses.
Seriously, there must be some conspiracy to ruin America's youth! I feel sorry for the boys who have to watch Jessica Simpson bitch about her boyfriend not paying her enough attention. Where is the angsty angry people jumping around on stage. No wonder the kids are going postal in schools!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Some people are just near-sighted. There's much more involved with Neo-pets than just a website. It's an entire BRAND with toys and other merchandise affiliated with it. The value is in the whole package, not just the website.
The insight of commenting on other's work makes blogs a rich and interesting resource, but isn't it this type of laziness that brings them into disrepute?