Join the Club

The power of children is amazing. They have a built-in convincing power. If they want something they will get it.
The fact that children do not have credit card does not prevent them from spending money. This is why they have parents…
Club Penguin is an online game for children, virtual penguins in a virtual world. You can earn some coins by playing some games and spend it by buying stuff for yourself. You can chat with other penguins and do harmless regular social network things. The registration is free and gives you a taste of what could be the done.
But, and there is a big but, you need to be a member for being able to get the fun stuff. The membership costs ‘only’ $5.95 per month.
Now, do you think that a child that his/her friends are members will not convince his/her parents to pay for it? If your answer was ‘no’ you better think again.
I don’t know the exact numbers but I believe that Disney (who bought it 2 years ago for $350M) is having many paying users. It seems Club Penguin found the formula.
I’m relatively new to the club. My daughter convinced me a week ago to pay for membership. So they managed to caught her but will she insist on paying for the second month or will she get bored of it? I know the answer for that – after one month you can be promoted to a spy (never mind what it means) so the second month is guaranteed. What about the month after?

The Good/Evil Empire (take your pick)

When Google released Google Chrome I decided to use it. Dont know why but I liked it. Not only that I use it I also use the dev release. Is it better than IE, Firefox or any other browser out there? Don’t know, but it works well for me. I don’t intend to give a review of Chrome but to point out an interesting observation - Chrome has a feature that shows the 9 most used sites when you open a new tab. I don’t know how its algorithm works but while looking the other day on my top 9 sites, I found the following sites:
1. Google search (of course)
2. Google Reader
3. Google Calendar
4. Google Blogger
5. Facebook (how did it mange to slip in…)
6. Google Groups
7. Google Analytics
8. Google Docs
9. Google Trends

What does it mean?
I’m either a Google addict or Google push their sites to the list. I can believe both… I use at least 5 more Google services/sites which are not on the list.
Gmail was not on the list maybe because I never close it and I have it in my tray as well.

No doubt about it, Google dominates. Is it a good or evil empire? Up to you to decide.

P.S. In the spirit of these days, must be said that empire or not, GOOG got bitten badly this year