Following my previous post about Lego.com, I spent some time on another children’s community, Mattel’s Barbiegirls.com. This is certainly a slick site, and, like Lego.com, it takes a variety of measures to protect children from other users. However, I was left wondering who will protect these girls from Mattel, which lures in girls with a free membership, then pushes its paid V.I.P. membership aggressively and relentlessly.
The homepage has an excellent video presentation which introduces the community in clear terms. It’s worth looking at as a model for new user introductions for any kind of website.
Registration on Barbiegirls.com, as on Lego.com, involves parental notification (a step which any enterprising child can easily bypass).
Barbiegirls.com has a separate section for parents with the stated goal of keeping parents informed and in control of their daughters’ online activities. (It seems an odd marketing choice to continue the site’s bubblegum pink aesthetic and annoying electronic background music on these pages).
Girls and parents are encouraged to sign an online contract about how the website should be used. This is a nice idea, and cleverly executed.
With a free Barbiegirls.com membership, girls can participate in a variety of activities, in which they are methodically thwarted by their lack of a paid V.I.P. status. They can decorate their virtual bedrooms but are limited to a few pieces of furniture, leaving the rooms looking bare. They can customize and dress up their online avatar, but when they choose the wrong hairstyle, eyelid shape, or halter top – oops! A message pops up telling them it’s for V.I.P.s only.
Barbiegirls.com offers members two kinds of chats — one in which the girls are supplied with a set of vapid preset phrases, and another (requiring parental permission) in which they can communicate more freely, but are restricted to an approved dictionary and not permitted to share personal information. The use preset phrases in the first case is ostensibly intended for the girls’ safety. Presented with the opportunity to put words in young girls’ mouths, Mattel has taken advantage of the situation to convert the girls into spokespeople for paid membership. Some of the phrases prepared for the girls include, “I CAN’T WAIT TO BE A V.I.P.” “TONS OF MY BFFS (that is, Best Friends Forever) ARE V.I.P.! LOVE IT!” “HIYA! ARE YOU A V.I.P.?” and, “MY FAVE V.I.P. THING? UM, EVERYTHING!”
Of course, Mattel has no obligation to provide this elaborate girls’ community as a free service. And perhaps manipulative marketing directed to children has become so commonplace that it’s not worthy of mention here. But an online community is different from a TV commercial to which a child is exposed for just a few minutes and where there is a time lapse between the marketing and a trip to the mall. Barbiegirls.com is presenting girls with a play space, a culture, inviting them in for free, and then squeezing them for cash as the young members quickly learn that popularity has a price tag.
