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4 Jan

Universe chart Q4 2011: Avg User Age 10 to 15

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, Universe Graph, Virtual Research

The release of our Q4 2011 data headlined with total cumulative registered accounts reaching 1.7bn (read that post here). Here, we’re showing a segment from the Universe chart for virtual worlds with an average user age between 10 and 15. This age segment is the largest in the sector, closing with 787m registered accounts as at Q4 2011. Here’s the segment.

Stardoll and Club Penguin are the leaders in this age segment both with 150m registered accounts. Following up behind these two are Moshi Monsters and Neopets with circa 70m each.

Looking at virtual worlds with a heavy focus on user generated content, Roblox and Minecraft reside within this age segment with 3m and 18m users respectively. Expect these worlds to post significant increases in users during 2012. Of course, we’ll be following their progress.

Our has the full set of Universe charts and you can order the full KZero Universe chart presentation with high-res imagery can be here.

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4 Jan

Virtual World registered accounts reach 1.7bn in Q4 2011

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, Universe Graph, Virtual Research

Strong growth in the virtual worlds sector throughout 2011 saw total cumulative registered accounts reach 1,772m at the end of Q4 2011. This growth was driven by booming user bases from worlds such as Poptropica, Habbo, Moshi Monsters, Stardoll and Club Penguin.

Encouragingly, whilst the top-tier larger worlds (with over 50m registered users) continue to attract users and leverage their brands, mid-tier worlds (10m to 50m registered users) such as Bin Weevils, Wizard 101, Minecraft, Meez and Fantage also posted positive increases.

The table below shows quarterly numbers by major age range.

From Q3 to Q4 2011, total cumulative registered accounts grew by 282m (an 18.9% quarter on quarter increase), compared to a 141m increase in users from Q2 to Q3 (a 10.4% increase).

The 10 to 15 year old segment continues to set the pace in the space, closing with 787m total cumulative registered accounts in Q4 2011, with the 15 to 25 year old (average user age) element coming in second highest with 596m total accounts.

The chart below shows total cumulative registered accounts by major age range.

We’ll be posting the Universe chart segments on here very shortly, but in the meantime you can get a sneak peak over on our .

The full KZero Universe chart presentation with high-res imagery can be ordered here.

 

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17 Oct

Quick stats: VWs by Size and Region

User Analysis, Virtual Research

Following on from a recent client request to see virtual world registered accounts by major region, here’s a quick chart visualising the findings.

The data is based on cumulative registered account data from Q2 2011 and clearly shows the dominance of Western Europe and North America. Keep an eye on South America and Eastern Europe though, with Brazil and Turkey (classified into Eastern Europe) on the rise.

 

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6 Oct

Some Monsters are for Nurturing, some are for Fighting

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, User Analysis, Virtual Research

Leading UK virtual world Moshi Monsters is getting a lot of the limelight at present with various brand extension strategies such as toys, tv and music. Hot on their heels are Bin Weevils, going from strength to strength from a user acquisition perspective. Now there’s a new contender in the mix, or rather a Monster – Fight My Monster.

Whereas Moshi Monsters leverages a core play mechanic of Nurturing (definition:Interested in looking after their avatar and pet if applicable. Likely to be younger boys and girls, plus older girls), Fight My Monster focusses on pvp battles adopting a trading card style mechanic. Of course, like most other worlds and online games in this demographic there’s also a raft of mini-games.

Fight My Monsters is growing relatively quickly, up to 300k users since their launch in Jan 2011 (91% from the UK). The chart below shows registered account growth (summer holidays are always good for acquiring users in the KT space).

Average session lengths are also on the rise, indicating a strengthening user engagement relationship. Continue reading →

8 Sep

A Slideshare presentation about Slideshare presentations

Strategic Marketing, Virtual Research

Sharing is something we like to do at KZero. And, over the years we’ve shared a great deal of research and insight about the virtual worlds sector.

In fact, we only have one report that we don’t provide for free – everything else is shared, made available on request and viewable on Slideshare. To date, KZero reports and presentations have amassed over 320,000 views on Slideshare, so we’ve done a little presentation showing some data about the reports.

The headlines:

  • Total views: 324,410
  • Email shares: 592
  • Tweets: 158
  • Favourites: 356

Our most popular report on Slideshare is the old Kids, Tweens and Teens report (the newer, better version of this report is our only premium report), with 192k views to date. Second place goes to our Virtual Worlds 2011 report, approaching 20k views. Here’s our Slideshare presentation about Slideshare presentations.

A Slideshare Presentation about Slideshare Presentations
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1 Sep

Fans flock to Virtual Worlds on Facebook

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, Virtual Research

A year ago we looked at the popuarlity of Facebook fan-pages for a number of popular virtual worlds, including those with users under 13. The results, i.e. the number of respective fans for each virtual world were not surprising, with the larger worlds enjoying a higher number of fans than the smaller ones.

The chart below shows the same analysis one year on. Across the board – increases. But of course that’s to be expected as these virtual worlds (and most others, regardless of target market) use Facebook for a variety of reasons. And, of course Facebook itself is grown.

Some worlds actually use Facebook to communicate directly to parents of their users, whilst others promote events and competitions. Another growth area is using Facebook during beta trials to both recruit new users and . Probably the area with the biggest potential is . More about that in a future post.

 

So what do we see here?

maintains pole position with a huge number of fans (in reality they actually even more fans then we’re showing in the chart but we’ve taken the fan-page with the highest following).

They’ll be breaking through 1m fans and on the tails of pretty soon. We’ve taken IMVU out of this analysis because this focus is on KT&T.

has grown massively during the last year with 500k fans now with Hello Kitty Online (note – a young brand) coming in with over 300k fans.

Another future post and supporting report will look right across the spectrum of all virtual worlds using Facebook as an acqusition and retention tool.

Moving on, some of you may look at the chart above and comment that Facebook itself has grown significantly over the same 12 month period so seeing increases in the fan-pages of virtual worlds (and any other group on Facebook) shouldn’t be a surprise. We asked ourselves the same question and did some further analysis. Continue reading →

23 Aug

Branded Virtual Goods – The (Virtually) Definitive List

KZero Clients, Virtual Goods, Virtual Research

We’ve updated our popular presentation, Branded Virtual Goods – The (Virtually) Definitive List. This presentation shows screen-shots of branded virtual goods and branded virtual experiences taken from MMOs, social games and virtual worlds. A high-res version is available by requesting it here.

Just in case you were wondering, there’s now over 150 brands!

Branded Virtual Goods, The (Virtually) Definitive List
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Strategy

Business Planning

Marketing/Media

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18 Aug

Age profiles: Chimpoo, Poptropica and Stardoll

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, Teenage+ Worlds, User Analysis, Virtual Research

This is the second post in this series looking at age profiles of popular virtual worlds (the full report is the next post). This post looks at two of the largest worlds, Poptropica and Stardoll, along with an ‘up and comer’ in the form of Chimpoo.

Stardoll has over 116m registered accounts with a user base pretty well distributed between North America and Europe. Poptropica has over 170m registered accounts and is strongest in the US. Chimpoo has 4m registered accounts with a user base largely from India. Here are the age profiles for these three worlds.

This chart highlights the impact that different play patterns and user experiences have on the ages of users inside virtual worlds.

For example, Stardoll is primarily dress-up, with users (predominantly females) customising their avatars with clothing. This is an evergreen play pattern, appealing to tweens just as much as teens.

As this post from 2008 shows, Stardoll even resonates with the Mothers of users, with over 60% playing Stardoll alongside their children and of this group, another 60% visit Stardoll without their children. Continue reading →

16 Aug

Age profiles: Moshi Monsters vs Bin Weevils

Kids/Tween Worlds, KZero Clients, User Analysis, Virtual Research

We’re a few days away from releasing our latest report on user age profiles in the Kids, Tweens and Teens virtual worlds market. So, in the meantime, here’s a look at two UK-based worlds gaining significant traction – Moshi Monsters and Bin Weevils.

Our age profile analysis visualises the ages of registered users in a simple to understand chart. First up – Moshi Monsters. The chart below compares 2011 data.

The sweetspot user age is 11 to 12, showing a one year increase from last year, indicating that Moshi is doing a great job with user retention – not surprising given the amount of brand-driven marketing they’ve been doing.

The profile has also widened slightly from last year into younger ages. As this brand continues to grow, the virtual world element becomes part of a larger brand framework and therefore kids are interacting with Moshi via multiple touch-points.

This ‘widening’ might also be as a result of increased efforts in the US. Year on year, the US element of their userbase has proportionately grown against the UK. The chart below shows the top eight countries for Moshi Monsters. Continue reading →

29 Jul

KZero Radar chart Q2 2011

Education, KZero Clients, Virtual Research, Virtual Worlds Radar Chart

Hot off the heels of our updated Universe chart, we’ve just released the updated Radar chart for the same period (you can order the Q2 Radar here). The Radar chart shows virtual worlds by category and stage of development. Here’s one of the segments showing Education,/Learning, Fashion/Lifestyle and Music.

 

 

Major developments this quarter (and year)….. Education and Brands/IP are leading the charge in terms of new worlds in development. Continue reading →

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