Webkinz - good or bad for the children?



Well it's Monday. Spent a good chunk of my weekend on Webkinz.com with my 4 year old son. If you haven't seen this I'd strongly recomend checking it out. Fortune just did an article on it as one of the fastest growing social networking sites with 2.3 million UV in Jan 07 staying 154 min / mth (for comparison Facebook is 11.6 million UV / mth @ 72 min / mth.

Basicially Webkinz is a virtual world for pets. You buy a stuffed animal (I got suckered at drugstore after reading Fortune article) and it has a unique PIN code. You go to the site and log in where you need to begin caring for your pet. Objective is to keep the Happiness, Health and Hunger scores up. You earn money through education activities (eg. getting a job counting shoes or entering math competitions ). You need the money to buy food, clothes and other items to increase you pets metrics. You can also interact with other friends pets through IM in the game.

My son finds it really interesting. I have to help him play right now, but he gets the concept and wants to keep his frog named Ribbit happy. He worried in the morning if Ribbit is hungry or wants to bounce on his trampeline...

Here's the link to fortune article http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/03/05/8401272/index.htm

what do you think?

 

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