I’ve been looking for a resource that offers up the history of Club Penguin, the successful children’s social networking business recently acquired by Disney. I’ve also been interested in finding data which follows Club Penguin’s web growth since its launch. Having found only a snapshot in time posted here and a sprinkling of data displayed there, I decided pull together my own resource assembled from hundreds of web pages I’ve visited on the topic.

Company History

First, I’ll offer a chronological history of how Club Penguin came to be. Then I’ll present recorded web metrics of the Club Penguin site. Onto the history…

Another noteworthy item not often mentioned in articles about Club Penguin is the spirit of giving started by the founders which supports child-focused charitable work in developing countries:

“Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe each stand to receive about $115 million for the two-year-old self-funded virtual world. 10 percent of CP’s net profits already go to charity, primarily through a foundation started by the three. Merrifield confirmed that 10 percent of the amount each makes from the sale will go to the foundationmore than $30 million from the cash payout. ‘It’s something we’ve done all along. We never wanted it to be seen as a marketing gimmick. … It’s part of our DNA.’ “

Club Penguin’s Web Metrics

Next, onto the web data. In almost all of the articles reviewed, either Nielsen//NetRatings or comScore Media Metrix is cited for their web metrics. Other sources include Hitwise, Compete, Alexa, but how these companies offer up their data tend to be less understandable to the general public or draw upon a sample base that is too small.

It’s definitely frustrating to compare Neilsen//Netratings and comScore web measurement data sets. Why isn’t one company’s numbers equal to another? One company may be better at capturing data from the online home user than the online work user. Another may be better at capturing all of North America instead of just the US market. In almost all the articles I’ve reviewed, it is unclear if these web metrics represent just the US or all of North America unless specifically stated, though I have a hunch that comScore does a better job at capturing all of North America in their data.

Below I compare monthly unique user data provided by Neilsen//NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix on the Club Penguin website over time. Each number below provides a link to the web page where I found the data:

The company Hitwise is sparsely referenced in articles about CP, but the company provides helpful data about how much market share a company captures online over time compared to other sites. Here are two charts: Club Penguin’s market share data represented alone through June 2007, and comparison data against Runescape, Webkinz, Neopets, Gaia, Stardoll, and Habbo through April 2007.

And finally, below is comparison data from Compete. Compete.com is rarely referenced in articles I’ve read. This chart is interesting to look at for trending analysis only. Compete is not often used as a critical analysis tool of websites because of how it gathers its information from a small sample size. Here I compare Club Penguin against Webkinz and Neopets.





Lessons Learned

So, what do I take away from this research effort? The two year “overnight success” as stated in the press makes for great headlines, but the reality is that a lot more effort went into the development and success of Club Penguin than is acknowledged. As the tallented vaudeville comedian Eddie Cantor famously said, “It takes twenty years to make an overnight success.” This quote seems very fitting here. I wish the folks at Club Penguin continued success. May the next segment of your adventure be as exciting as the first.

Just after I wrote an article called A Survey of Kids’ Social Networking Sites, a noteworthy report was released by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) and the research firm Grunwald Associates which takes a look at how students use and experience social networking sites. In the report called Creating & Connecting // Research and Guidelines on Online Social — and Educational — Networking some 1, 277 students ages nine to 17 were surveyed online about their online social networking habits. In addition to the student survey, 1, 039 parents and 250 school district leaders were also interviewed by telephone about their thoughts regarding students using social networking sites. This 12 page brief offers up some surprising statistics and contains just a very small fraction of the much larger in-depth report which can be purchased through Grunwald Associates.

Here I’ve separated out just the student responses found in this smaller report. This first set of statistics reveal how students are active participants and creative contributors in online social networking and community-based destinations:

• 96% of all students who have access to the Internet report that they have used social networking technologies (including chat, text messaging, blogging and visiting online communities)
• 81% say they have visited a social networking site within the past three months
• 71% say they use social networking sites at least weekly
• 41% say they post comments on message boards every week
• 21% say they post comments on message boards every day
• 12% upload music or podcasts of their own creation at least weekly
• 9% say they upload video of their own creation at least weekly
• 25% update their personal Web site or online profiles at least weekly
• 12% update their personal Web site or online profiles every day
• 30% report having there own blogs

This next set of data calls out how students encounter problems online with inappropriate content, cyberbullying, privacy and strangers:

• 20% of all students say they have seen inappropriate pictures on social networking sites
• 16% say they have seen inappropriate language on social networking sites
• 7% say they have experienced self-defined cyberbullying
• 7% say someone has asked them for information about their personal identity on a social networking site
• 4% say they have had conversations on social networking sites that made them feel uncomfortable
• 3% say they’ve given out their email addresses, instant messaging screen names, or other personal identification to strangers
• 3% say unwelcome strangers have tried repeatedly to communicate with them online
• 2% say a stranger they met online tried to meet them in person
• 0.08% of all students say they’ve actually met someone in person from an online encounter without their parent’s permission

After reading about the recent acquisition of social networking superstar Club Penguin by Disney, I started taking stock of other social networking sites available for kids. I have my long-term favorites like Whyville because of its educational mission, and Webkinz because of their tangible toy / virtual world business model. But after digging through dozens of websites that claim to have a social networking component, I realize that many of these sites apply this term loosely. For example, if a website allows a user to play many different games and activities online, complete with a customized avatar, and allows a user the ability to see other user’s avatars in games, without communication occuring between community members, does this constitute a social networking environment? If the communication occurs outside of a virtual world’s website, in the form of an email to and from members, does this mean such a service has a social networking component?

I assembled a list of kids’ social networking websites I’m currently watching. Each site has a very defined method of communicating with its members. They include the following:

This list defines social networking sites that are just for kids ages 12 and under, though some sites creep up a little beyond 12 years of age. The only exception I added to this list is Runescape. Runescape is a very popular massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) that was not specifically developed for kids, but kids have found it and they flock to it. Runescape is not for all kids, and parents should judge for themselves about whether it’s right or not for their own child. Runescape is a battle-like virtual world environment, and chat can occur with anyone who plays online, even though it is filtered and monitored. Since no age is recommended by the site, I recommend ages 11 or 12 and higher.

A few notes about my chart.

• Any site that includes ads and is marked with an asterisk (“*”) means that this site has ads only related to the products this company offers (i.e. Webkinz ads are just for other Webkinz items).
• In terms of cost, most sites have a free to use or a monthly fee component. Sometimes these sites have two tiers of service where the paid service offers more bells and whistles. Sometimes a product needs to be purchased instead of paying a monthly subscription in order to reach the higher tiered service.
• How communication occurs with community members varies. “Canned chat” means users can communicate with each other through a short list of pre-approved words and phrases. Nothing else. (Click here to see an example of ToonTown’s canned chat in action, or here for the history behind the development of this version of chat called “SpeedChat”.) “Filtered chat” relies on software tools to strip out bad words, names, locations, and inappropriate content. Many times a live monitor oversees all communication written back and forth to users, in addition to these software filtering tools. imbee is unique in that any messages that are sent to your child have the option of being approved by the parent before being forwarded on.

There are other sites worth knowing about, but span ages from older teen to adult. Sites like Piczo, Dubit, Faketown, and CyWorld (all ages). Generally I find the older the demographic, the less monitoring and filtering of messages between users.

If you’re aware of other social networking sites for kids or teens please do share here with similar details about target age, cost, and how members socialize with each other.

It’s official. Acquisition season in the children’s social networking world has begun. Moments ago, Disney acquired the wildly successful children’s social networking site Club Penguin for $350 million dollars. Club Penguin launched its unique online service for children in October 2005, just six months after another wildly successful social networking website for children, Webkinz. This past June, Club Penguin reached 4.7 million unique visitors to it site according to comScore Media Metrix.

While the folks at Club Penguin have recently been in discussion with Sony regarding the sale of the company, negotiations broke down just a few short weeks ago with the technology giant.

There has been a buzz of activity related to social networking in the last year and we’ve yet to hear the end of it. What’s noteworthy about this particular deal? Here are a few of my predictions:

• This is the first major acquisition in the children’s social networking space. Plan to see similar acquisitions soon.
• Many more social networking site for kids have launched in the last two months, with many more yet to be announced.
• So much activity is occurring in the kids’ social networking environment, that this specific online activity for children is positioned to become very crowded over the next six months.

Stay tuned for lots more activity and news in this space! (For related blog articles, see my posts in April and May of 2007.)

To most adults, knowing which technologies kids prefer and why, is at best, a guessing game. Which is more important: cell phones? iPods? MySpace? In the past year, some very insightful leisure time and technology reports about kids have come out from The NPD Group (see prior blog post in March 2007), Nickelodeon (prior posts in Nov 2006 and Jan 2007), and recently a new division of Weekly Reader called Weekly Reader Research. Each group has something very unique to share about kids and technology. Yesterday, portions of a new study called “The Circuits of Cool / Digital Playground” was released. This study, which interviewed 18, 000 kids and youth from 16 different countries, was collaboratively developed by MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft. This latest survey looks at technology and its influences on lifestyle of kids (8-14) and young people (14 – 24) around the globe.

Here are a few top level insights from the study:

• Technology has enabled young people to have more and closer friendships, thanks to constant connectivity.
• Kids and young people don’t love the technology itself — they just love how it enables them to communicate all the time, express themselves and be entertained.
• Digital communications such as IM, email, social networking sites and mobile/sms are complementary to, not competitive with, TV. TV is part of young peoples’ digital conversation.
• Despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, kid and youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.

Here are a few data snippets from this survey looking only at kids 8-14:

• 59% of 8-14 year olds still prefer their TV to their PCs.
• 68% of 8-14 respondents said they felt safer having their mobile phones with them outside the home.
• When parents aren’t around, 8-14s are more likely to communicate with friends, participate in chat forums and use the internet for entertainment.
• Under the age of 14, kids generally use the phone as a toy. After 14, the mobile phone quickly becomes a means of self-expression and communication.

The full press release, which includes comparison data for kids and young people around the world regarding cell phone use, online friends, social networking, TV, computer use and more, can be found here.