Club Penguin is a virtual
world where kids create
an online persona, often
called an avatar, in the
form of a coloured penguin.
They
waddle
around the virtual penguin
world
playing
games, chatting with other penguins and visiting
their igloos, attending
parties
and
earning
points to buy puffle pets,
penguin clothes, and furnishings for their igloos.
The bigger picture is
that Club Penguin is one
of a new breed of online
communities
designed
specifically for kids between 8 and 13 years
old. These kids' communities have been called
training grounds for virtual worlds like Second Life
and social networking
sites
like
Facebook,
which are popular with
teens and young adults.
The terms of use require
people who use these
sites to be at least 13
years
old. As
preteens
often
want
to
do
what teens are doing, it
was only a matter of time
before someone created
similar Web destinations
for the pre-teen set.
Tween sites are clearly a
booming business. Disney
paid
Club
Penguin's
founders $350 million to
purchase the site. The
founders will continue to
manage the site, and if
they meet aggressive
growth targets over the
next few years, they will
receive $350 million more,
according to news reports. The Club Penguin
website has more than 12
million active penguins.
I remember in the 5th
grade my friend introduced me to RuneScape, before when it
was still on jagex.com.
Back then, there was
one server, everyone
played for free, you lost
everything when you
died, the bank held only
money, the world was Al
Kharid, Varrock, Lumbridge, Barbarian Village, and Draynor Village. There was no log
for quests. Over time, it
has become a better