Bratz vs. Barbie has proven to be the seminal war in the rapidly changing toy industry. Today’s kids are more sophisticated. The toy industry must now compete with consumer electronics, fashion and entertainment purchases. The tarted-up look of MGA Entertainment’s Bratz dolls is a direct response to that demand. By contrast, Mattel’s Barbie seems positively wholesome.
Today’s WSJ reports on the latest front in this war: the Web. Both Mattel and MGA Entertainment are in the process of launching online social networking sites aimed at their 6-13 year-old market. Mattel has a social network in beta, while MGA’s site is yet to launch.
Both sites feature similar activities — chat, design your own hangout space, make an avatar — and both feature heavy computer monitoring to ensure girls’ safety on the site. The latter feature strikes me as a bit of a problem. Many of the more popular social networks aimed at children in this age group — like Club Penguin and KidzWorld — feature human monitors.
This is helpful for two reasons:
- Nuance is not lost on human beings. They won’t crack down on harmless conversation because some arcane, literal subroutine told them to do so.
- Human monitors can take the opportunity to connect with the kids using the site. As a result, kids get to know the adults behind the companies that produce the products they use. Companies should take every opportunity to develop personal relationships with customers.
Neither doll-oriented social network will do very well if limits on girls’ relationships become burdensome. With computer monitoring, there are bound to be situations girls will discover that the computer limits harmless communications between friends. Any social network that doesn’t reinforce real-world relationships will rapidly fall by the wayside.
Mattel seems to have figured this out to a degree by including two different levels of chat in its network: B Chat and Secret B Chat. B Chat can take place anywhere, whereas Secret B Chat can take place only in a girl’s own room between girls who actually know one another.
This would be a good idea were the process for proving a real-world connection not quite so onerous and expensive. To establish a real world connection, each girl must own a $60 .mp3 device and they must connect the devices to one another’s computers in order to establish a connection. This rules out girls who live thousands of miles apart, and girls whose parents refuse to spend $60 on an additional .mp3 player when their daughter already owns an iPod. Some girls may never be able to establish that they actually know their friends, which will ultimately result in a loss of interest.
It’s understandable and laudable that Mattel and MGA want to create a safe environment for their customers. But their investment in their online social networks won’t pay off unless they rely on human beings to police users’ interactions.
We’ll be covering best practices for online community building at the next Blog Business Summit.
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