Our Spring PCC Summit marketing team is offering a free webkinz to anyone who registers by December 14, 2007! For those of you not familiar with this new "toy craze," Webkinz are stuffed animals from the Ganz gift company that are similar to many other small plush toys, but they come with a special code on their labels that allows access to the "Webkinz World," a website where you can "adopt" a virtual version of the pet for interaction. Webkinz claims there are more than one million registered users of the Webkinz website! The Ganz’ business model is clever. The company has figured out how to sell old-fashioned stuffed toys at a time when children are faced with addictive videogames, iPods and plenty of purely online kid worlds such as Club Penguin. Your companies need to find the same sort of collaboration zone for customers, partners, and employees. At the PCC Summit, we have a whole track of sessions where we discuss the technologies, best practices and organizational changes needed to make this happen! Register now - and get yourself a Webkinz!

Submit a Comment | Permalink

So, we’re giving away a Webkinz. Webkinz are the ultimate child collaboration device, and if you need to understand how online collaboration works, Webkinz are a great way to get started. How do kids play together? What matters to them? Is it possible to game with a purpose? All of these questions come through during Webkinz play. My son has, I think, four of them (including a strange-looking two-legged furry duck that is bizarrely appealing, in its way).

What I’m curious about, myself, is what level of appeal it has for kids that Webkinz can play TOGETHER across boundaries, as far as I can tell. (I have declined to allow my work computer to be hijacked for Webkinz, at least so far, and at least as far as I know.) There’s a feature where other kids’ Webkinz could come over and play with Joe’s Webkinz. At least I think that’s what would happen. (Sorry. I just found myself deep in Webkinz photos on flickr. I am hoping this one ("http://www.flickr.com/photo...") is a spoof. Please tell me it’s a spoof. On balance, though, I think we can say that lots of people are Webkinz-interested ("http://www.flickr.com/searc...").