BandwidthCamp

Compete released their Top 50 websites since 2001 report over the weekend. The only game company on the list is , which until a few years ago wasn’t owned by Electronic Arts (EA).

The online gaming site has grown from a respectable attention share of .34% in 2001, it now grabs nearly 1.69% of all time spent online.

EA has a built a great community over the past few years and quite the money maker I hear too.

[Via Wired]

Following on the heels of this weekends post about the BBC launching Adventure Rock. AdAge has a run down of the virtual worlds that are going after this younger demographic., especial with a female slant.

It’s not alone. Mattel launched a “Barbie Girls” site in April that now has 5.5 million registered users. The Barbie Girls doll-shape MP3-player/flash-drive hybrid hit stores in August, and users are spending about 30 minutes per visit on the site, Mattel said, although it declined to give traffic figures. The device hooks users into the free site and unlocks additional features — more clothes and such. And Disney paid $700 million for Club Penguin in August, a site that had about 1.6 million monthly users at the time. Webkinz, owned by Ganz, has about 1 million registered users. MGA’s user data weren’t immediately available, but its director of online development, Lisa Sirlin, said children are continuously getting web savvy at earlier ages.

Younge people are getting online earlier and earlier these days. A few recent studies have shown that females go online to connect and socialize, which is what all these virtual communities are about at the end of the day for the end users. Businesses do it to make money and grow their brand, which is another post all together.

[Via AdAge]

Sony has just announced the launch of an internal in-game advertising group. The group will be run by Darlene Kindler.

This department was created after Sony partnered with Nielsen Media Research (the people who do TV ratings etc) in July. They’re trying to develop a measurement system to monitor game network advertising. Part of the stuff they’ll be monitoring is PLAYSTATION Home, the 3D community for PS3 users.

This was going to happen sooner of later. Sony’s not going to let DoubleFusion, IGA and other capture revenue that they could be making without the use of a middle man.

Update: [Via Sony Press Release, Gamasutra and Kotaku]

The BBC plans to launch Adventure Rock with a Club Penguin stance on advertising.

“Club Penguin has taken a firm stand and will not include any advertising or subtle cross-marketing opportunities,” Club Penguin communications director Kate Mason said in an interview with MIPCOM News. “There’s a coffee shop begging to be a Starbucks, but that will never happen,” she added.

Club Penguin was that Canadian build virtual world that sold to Disney back in August. It’s to early to tell how well Adventure Rock will do, but there is a market for tween and teen virtual worlds.

WorldsInMotion is my hot sources for all this great news lately.

The Electric Sheep Company, plans to open an ad network within Second Life. This is on the heels of yesterdays news that tweens love brands in virtual world.

All of the eyes and ears of kids’ virtual worlds notice that kids actively want to flaunt their favorite brands to their friends in virtual worlds, and providing more in-world branding opportunities to marketers is just as much providing a service to its users as it is offering ad space to the clothing labels or snack food brands. It makes sense — that age group behaves that way in the real world, experimenting with new ways of expressing and defining themselves, and sharing that with others.

Not having been a tween for a while and knowing only a handful at best. I guess this is true. I don’t know, it seems murky at best. We don’t need more ads in our world, we need less and higher quality ones if anything.