I’m a Barbie Girl!

Mattel has recently launched an online community for 7-12 years old girls. I’ve found it out through Contagious, and even if when I was young(er) I never played with a Barbie (am I the only girl on earth who never owned a Barbie?) I really felt like signing up to explore the BarbieGirls world. In the Barbie online community world everything is pink (of course!) and very nicely designed. The site is still in beta-version, but it’s already full of features to explore. The welcome page shows a short animation which explains what is going to happen on the site, and definitely works to encourage sign-ups.

Young girls can create their personalized character and also design their rooms setting the rules for entering in it (nobody can enter, everybody can, or just friends are allowed). Most of the features are free and open to everybody, but some tools are available only to those who buy the Barbie mp3 player (which will be available in July).

Barbiegirls.com it’s a virtual world, therefore it offers all the “standard” opportunities virtual worlds usually have: it’s possible to chat & play and, of course to earn “B-Bucks”, Barbies’ virtual currency to be spent in the virtual mall.
Barbiegirls looks like a very rich, complex and therefore ambitious project. It’s quite early to judge it, but given the number of communities out there, it looks like Barbie “had” to take this step in the online world, to keep in touch with the young girls. I don’t know much of kids community, so I don’t know which are the competitors out there for Barbie. At first sight (but I’m 32!) it’s very well done and conceived, let’s wait and see if it’s also able to pay-off, you know, young audiences are soooo picky!
I don’t know the agency behind it, if someone can leave a comment with the name we will appreciate it.