Viper Future

Is Club Penguin the new Linkedin?

Author: Neil Wilkins

Neil learnt his marketing with the likes of Orange, NatWest, BP Castrol and Ordnance Survey and now helps individuals and businesses to communicate more effectively. He trains and mentors marketers on professional Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications through to post-graduate level.

Now clearly the title of this blog sounds a little silly and to be honest how could a social network of 8 year olds really overtake the 135 million grown ups who network through the mighty Linkedin?

Well in some cases perhaps adults really don't know best. As strange as it sounds there could be some fundamentally important things to learn from how Club Penguin has already grown to engage with over 150 million subscribers to become the key social networks for pre-teens and let's remember in only a decade's time they will start to enter the online space of grown-ups.

For those who haven't ventured into the exciting world of Club Penguin where your penguin avatar goes on journeys, plays games, dances in nightclubs and invites other penguins to parties in their customised chez igloo, then you might be missing a whole new world.

It's not Second Life and it's not Facebook. Designed for children there are restrictions on language and actually communicating with other penguins (oh, sorry, the children behind them) is carefully controlled to protect the child's privacy and safety. Within that boundary though the levels of creativity and customisation of this alternative world have led social commentators to suggest that this kind of online 3D space could be the future of social networking and online interaction.

You can decide to bury your head in the snow and think of this as a fad that isn't really very serious but with levels of functionality and engagement that Facebook users can only dream about you would be hard pressed to stand in the way of the tide of these 8 year olds and say it'll never take off. Can 150 million kids really be that wrong?

- Posted on Thursday 01 Dec 2011 at 17:09 by Neil Wilkins

Tags: facebook (30), second life (6)