The Cult of the NeoPet

Wired is running an article examining the ups and downs of the Neopet Addiction. The overly cute online 'game' mostly consists of teaching kids to look at ads, but somehow has developed a large following online. From the article: "A generation agrees. Neopets has a staggering 25 million members worldwide. It has been translated into 10 languages and gets more than 2.2 billion pageviews per month. These dedicated Neopians spend an average of 6 hours and 15 minutes per month on the site. That makes Neopets the second-stickiest site on the Internet - ahead of Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and eBay, according to Media Metrix. What's more, its demographics are the stuff of marketers' dreams: Four out of five Neopians are under age 18, and two out of five are under 13." Relatedly, Kotaku has a quick blurb about the Scientology backdrop against which this cuteness is projected. Update: 12/09 19:14 GMT by Z : Fixed broken link. There's a bug there, methinks.

Comments

SCIENTOLOGY

[Eightyford]

From the kotaku link:
"Adam and Donna are nice people, in and of themselves.
The negative aspects of NeoPets, all came from the side
of Scientology-Oriented business structure/psyche. From
the very get-go, any employee who applies for a job,
will be faced with a couple of personality screening
tests. I shit you not, I had a more comfortable time
with my SAT's in high school! A lot of people make fun
of Scientologists in an ignorant sort of way; they don't
really know what goes on behind the curtains, but I
assure you, it's not pretty. In hindsight, it's a little
ironic that many of the execs are part of the cult, and
many fledglings didn;t seem to get promoted to that
level without first converting (this was the case while
I was there). A mere observation, more than anything
else. Unfortunately, many businesses that visit/partner
up with these guys will look at the architecture of this
successful business, and will be inclined to adopt it
for themselves. It is for this reason alone that I want
to see NeoPets fail."


Scientology scares me... I mean praise L-RON!!!