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

jsut a question

[schnits0r]

Other then 13 year old girls, who uses Neopets anymore? It's only fitting MTV bought it.

Re:jsut a question

[MilenCent]

Actually, and please understand it pains me greatly to say this, but I know at least three grown adults who play NeoPets.

One of 'em... is male.

Now, if you'll excuse me, me and my newly-ascended Pastamancer are off to play a REAL webgame.

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

[alvinrod]

From the article:

membership has grown to over 25 million from 90,000 in 2000. Either there are a lot of 13 year old girls out there or more people are using it than we think. For all I know, my coworker in the next cubicle could be a secret Neopet closet case.

I've never been to the site before, and now I have even less of a reason to go. Personally, I just don't trust/like a TV channel that calls itself M(usic)TV without playing any actual music. (Yes I'm aware that they have videos at 3 in the morning or some ungodly hour when I'm not awake.) Just my personal opinion though.

Re:jsut a question

[MilenCent]

You, my dear sir, are exactly right.

Re:jsut a question

[generic-man]

That's not why they changed their name.

Feckin Neopets

[Scorchio]

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.

Re:I think we've got a record here!

[jimi the hippie]

In Soviet Russia, articles make fun of you...

It's the character designs

[Doctor Cat]

I suspect the majority of Neopets' revenue has probably come from the very successful licensing deals they've done. Along with stuffed animals and little electronic virtual pet toys, they've also got a very successful collectible trading card game from Wizards of the Coast, right alongside Magic the Gathering & Pokemon. The animal characters and the art style of them are what made it such a hot, fast growing property. A lot of the initial games were kinda slow, all HTML affairs, followed up by a bunch of simple flash & shockwave games, mostly single player. Their game economy loosely ties together all the activities & gives players some minimal interaction with each other. It's not as fast paced an interaction as World of Warcraft - but perhaps it's more mainstream in appeal, and it is an architecture that scales to support 25 million users a lot easier than games like WoW or Everquest.

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.

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.

Re:Curse you MTV! Curse yoooooou!

[vertinox]

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!