Noteworthy: Girlsense fashion show

GirlSense, the online community for tween girls that lets them design and sell virtual fashions in their online stores, is launching a new fashion slideshow tool.This new feature lets girls create fashion slideshows to show off the designs they’ve made on the site. Girls can add music, graphic transitions, animated effects and backgrounds for personalized touches to the slideshow. Models the girls have in their account can also be incorporated into the slideshow, as well as the small selection of clothes girls can choose from that have been made available directly in the slideshow editor. Customization is offered in a limited extent, due to the nature of the site and the age of its users. This means that the background and music options are those that GirlSense has provided, and uploading material for slideshows is not an option. These slideshows can be shared with others on the site, as well as embedded on other social networking sites, like MySpace, hi5 and Piczo.

GirlSense Launches Fashion Slideshow for Tweens

First of all, I love my girlsense avatar.

Secondly, this is a great way to engage the doll/dress-up playpattern, while engaging the fashion-world obsessed teens (what with Bravo’s/TLC/and MTV’s fashion-catering programming, makes sense).

There is a twinge, deep down, (that has NOTHING to do with the girlsense site) about the continuing glory & adoration we keep heeping, as a culture, on this materialistic/model-thin behavior. But, alas, that’s not what this post is about.

If anything, there’s a flavor of flip.com here– the ability to mix/match/make your own fashion shows remind me of the flipbooks. Anyway, check it out.

GoPets engages Community to OWN community

Via GamePolitics.com, an uplifting story of corporate responsibility to counteract yesterday’s exploration of corporate neglect. Erik Bethke, CEO of a virtual pet MMO-environment called GoPets, has announced that their site wants the game community’s help (academic and practitioner, as well as players, I would assume) in drafting an “Avatar Bill of Rights” that will allow players to retain IP rights and foster user-generated content…as well as create a much more level and democratic playing field wherever political, ethical and legal issues arise.

Gamine Expedition: GoPets Avatar Bill of Rights

(Sara G over at Gamine Expedition has a more detailed account of the GoPets initiative. Check it out)

Okay, so granted: this is a great PR opportunity.

If a brand has an existence online… it has an agenda. And as I’ve said before… all these virtual worlds created to support user playpatterns & promote brand/product–>That stuff ain’t free. And it ain’t cheap either.

GoPet is capitalizing on their audience (THEIR OVER 13 YEAR OLD AUDIENCE, no U13 tater tots allowed, thanks) through their community. Give community engagement, give community empowerment and you’ve got a blindly dedicated audience (nothing more promising than boredom cured and a busy kid appreciated).

So by asking the community to CREATE their own bill of rights? A bill of rights that helps them OWN their online creative brilliance? Genius.

a) Problems on the rise with UGC. You put content that YOU created on a website? Goodbye ownership. That site can do anything they want with it because it’s THEIRS now. Sure, if a minor puts content on a site and they grow up– after 18 they can sue (even if their parents had given permission), and sue successfully. Why? They were a minor! Our deep-seeded American moral obligation says “don’t take candy from babies, you jerk.” (And I’m glad for that obligation)

So these days on sites like deviantart.com and so on kids are uploading their brilliant masterpieces. Then other (either clever or stupid) tater tots come peepin’ along, steal it, and then go all “Andy Warhol” on it by “graffiti-ing” it until it because something slightly different… and then resubmitting it as their own. Basically stealing and redecorating.

Kids, with their MIGHTY justice-system cores (like the bloomin’ justice league holding court in their souls, good lil buggin’s) do not like to be taken advantage of (yet, they can distribute it and not think twice), find this to be the MOST IRRITATING, HORRIBLE action ever, and start screaming from the rooftops “Yay, now, oh unfair beast! Giveth back my art-eth, you JERK-eth!” And then the mini-tantrums come. And uproars and chaos reigns.

So, by allowing kids to have their say in the Privacy Policy & Site Rules… it gives them the opportunity to safe-guard themselves and their worries.

b) Instead of engaging the community to write their “own bill” (which can be predicted from the start by professionals), GoPets could have just grabbed a Creative Commons License, and avoided the whole “tell us what you think” mess. But what hazzah would that illicit from the users? What “look at us, we truly care!” slogan would the company be able to shout?

Exactly. Give. And. Take.

Users get a voice. Users are lulled into thinking they’ve developed a new nation, a new ideal, safeguarded themselves, and pride in safeguarding the environment & their fellow community. Gryffindors the whole lot of ‘em.

Company gets to send out “look at us, we’re awesome” press releases. They get a boost in stats from a dedicated community. They get a more detailed explanation from their community directed AT their community (how can a community complain if they’re the ones dictating their own rules?)

Everyone wins. Yay. And PR high fives Community.

technorati tags:GoPets, PR, Marketing, Community, PrivacyPolicy, Rules, Youth, Game, UGC

Amanda Bynes reigns Teen Supreme

]

 

Oh, Amanda… graduated with full honors from the Schneider’s Bakery Bunch (including such names as: Kenan Thompson - SNL, Kel Mitchell- ‘Mystery Men’, Jamie Lynn Spears ‘Zoey 101′, Drake Bell ‘Musician/actor’, Josh Peck ‘actor/earning credit as a indy film actor’, etc).

 

I have to say– Amanda has REALLY cemented herself in the teen comedy genre. I wish she had a bit more freedom in the lead roles she takes. She was great-ish in “Hair Spray” because she got to character act and spread her goofy wings a bit. All these lead roles try to ‘prove’ something about her… like she’s this ‘hot’ girl who is a smart-ass and confident. That’s fine if it wasn’t the role she plays EVERY time. Sigh. I’d like to see her really prove that you CAN be a goofy, confident girl, letting her humor be the attractive factor, and not have to resort to being the urban/chic-stoic-strong-hot girl. What happened to the zany tot from ‘The Amanda Show’? Who knows, maybe she’ll show us something new (that we didn’t see in the trailer). So far? Sydney reminds me a LOT of the “Holly” chick she played in “What a Girl Wants”.

 

On a side note– I have to say, Ms. Bynes is one actress that’s done a great job with keeping herself FAR AWAY from the tabloid fodder currently staining & invading & encouraging (with their narcessistic enabling ‘look at me, everyone wants to know about me’) ways. Come to think about it– most of the kid stars from Nickelodeon have done a relatively great job of staying tabloid-free.

 

I’d love to chat with Mr. Dan Schneider one day and learn his ways of directing & engaging youth with his programs/producing. He’s like the kid-actor-whisperer. LOLz. With all these celeb kids growing into relatively popular actors– he’s kinda the Lauren Michaels (SNL) of the tween set.

 

2. Point about Ms. Bynes. She’s really digging the retelling-movies. Although “Sydney White” is a WRETCHED title for this flick (unoriginal and uninspired and practically BONKIN’ kids over the head with it’s obviousness, ugh), it will be interesting to see a retelling of Snow White (have there been that many? Seriously).

Amanda Retellings (okay, could be debatable, but seriously! think about it):

* Sydney White : Snow White
* She’s the Man : Merchant of Venice
* What a Girl Wants : Cinderella

 

She could be steppin’ up to Julia Stiles’s plate of retellings.

 

Anyway… despite the anti-Greek-theme (being an alumni Pi Phi myself I frown at the stereotype that all greeks were sucky/peer-pressure magnets… seriously, most hilarious time of my life… my sorority were the ‘girls next door’ that acted more like an episode of the muppets than anything else… myself and my BFF as Waldorf and Statler up in the balcony, I’ll have to tell ya’ll some tales sometime. Riotous. ), I’ll probably watch this film. It doesn’t look STELLAR, but it looks like a mind-numbing-with-teen-stereotype-entertainment, and truck loads better than the Bratz movie.