Stardoll announced yesterday that it had reached ten million registered members since its launch a year ago. With six million monthly uniques, 94% of whom are are teen and tween girls, Stardoll is leading Comscore's rankings in the 9-17 female demographic. We spoke with CEO Mattias Miksche in July to discuss the importance of avatars versus virtual worlds, and he emphasized the importance of identity and realism over immersiveness. However, Stardolls is working on new ways to expand the platform, allowing the users' creations to inhabit multiple rooms and be transported around the site. With worlds like BarbieGirls.com growing at an even faster rate in the same demographic, it will be interesting to see whether the world or the avatar wins out.
STARDOLL CELEBRATES TEN MILLION REGISTERED USERS
Premier Online Entertainment Destination Reported #1 Site for Girls 9-17 of Top 1000 Web Sites (ComScore)
First-Ever Virtual Swag Bags Gifted to 10,000,000 across the World
Stockholm, Sweden and Los Angeles, CA—August 28, 2007—Stardoll, the world’s largest online entertainment destination devoted to girls interested in fame, fashion and friends, announced that today the site has achieved ten million registered members.
Additionally, Stardoll was recently reported to be the #1 site in its composition of girls 9-17. Per ComScore, no other site out of the top 1000 sites on the Web has a higher concentration of members in this demographic.[1]
“It took the world about two hundred millennia to achieve a population of 10 million; Stardoll did it in just over a year,” said Stardoll CEO Mattias Miksche. “These milestones are exciting indicators of Stardoll’s incredible success as a vibrant and burgeoning online destination. We look forward to welcoming the next ten million trendsetting fashionistas to the community.”
In celebration of the event, recent Stardoll “Real Celebrity,” Hilary Duff, is welcoming the 10 millionth member with a personal video congratulation. One of Stardoll’s expert stylists will then work with the 10 millionth member to personalize her Stardoll suite and craft a virtual wardrobe. Additionally, “avastar" 10 million will receive 1000 Stardollars and will be featured on the site’s homepage as the cover girl of Stardoll magazine.
To show their appreciation to the rest of the community, Stardoll will gift all members with the first-ever virtual swag bags containing a number of prizes, including virtual perfume, virtual chocolates and the virtual version of Seventeen magazine’s current issue.
Stardoll receives more than 6 million unique visitors every month from across the globe—94% of whom are teen and tween girls. One of the few places on the Internet designed specifically with girls' interests in mind, Stardoll began as the hobby of Scandinavian-born Liisa, a retired factory worker in her late 50s with a lifelong aspiration to become a famous fashion designer. She taught herself basic design programs on her computer and shared her fashion creations with a few friends. With the help of her son, she then posted those fashions on the Internet for others to see, and soon Stardoll grew into a passionate online community of millions from more than 200 countries across the globe.
The Stardoll community express themselves in a number of unique ways:
They create their own “MeDolls,” which they design in their own likenesses by choosing from a variety of virtual facial shapes, eyes brows, skin tones, hair styles, lips, faces, eye colors and chins;
They dress those MeDolls in an array of Stardoll brands all available in the glittering StarPlaza—a new complex of stores and celebrity boutiques. Styles range from the couture feel of Voile and Fallen Angel’s goth textures to the 80s Nostalgia of Pretty in Pink and urban edge of Fudge;
They furnish their own virtual suites with pets, furniture and posters by shopping with Stardollars;
They interact in unique “clubs” that users can build and join. Stardoll clubs are a great way for members with similar interests to make friends, swap style tips, share decorating ideas and play games;
They craft well thought out promotional campaigns to become the next Stardoll Magazine cover girl by broadcasting messages to the entire site and petitioning the community for their vote. Generally, when the cover girl is announced the next time she visits her virtual suite she’ll have dozens of virtual gifts from members across the world congratulating her. (Interestingly, one of the most popular gifts is a virtual Dutch porcelain pig.)
MORE ABOUT STARDOLL
Stardoll (www.stardoll.com), a premier virtual fashion entertainment destination on the web, empowers users to express their creativity within a unique “social play” environment that blends childlike play with social networking to deliver a playful, fun-filled approach to fashion, celebrity and dress-up. Drawing a core worldwide audience of girls aged 9-17, the site offers an exclusive combination of more than 400 celebrity dolls, MeDolls that enable kids to build stunning likenesses of themselves, and an extensive collection of thousands of custom designed garments and accessories. The site is updated weekly with new dolls as well as hand-crafted fashions to fulfill the overwhelming demand and interests of the site’s more than 6 million unique monthly visitors. About 25,000 new fans join daily, adding to the existing fan-base of more than ten million registered users in over 200 countries. The company is based in Stockholm, Sweden with an office in Los Angeles, California. Stardoll is backed by two of the world’s top venture capital firms: Sequoia Capital, whose track record includes Yahoo, Google and YouTube among many others; and, Index Ventures, whose track record includes Skype among many others.
Comments