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? "

Comments

Re:jsut a question

[Metaphorically]

My daughter got me into it... They were talking about expanding at E3 this year, too. They had a PS2 game (that seems to have nothing to do with the web site other than the characters) and they have something coming out so you can play on cell phones. To be honest, I actually think they have a chance to break in to the mobile market, depending on how clever they are. I don't know how the MTV acquisition will affect that.

Re:jsut a question

[MilenCent]

You, my dear sir, are exactly right.

Bodes Well For Gaiaonline

[blueZhift]

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.