November 9th, 2007
Barbie Key Signings
If the upcoming Christmas season goes according to Mattel’s plan, your pre-teen daughter might be spending their post-holiday week at her friend’s houses doing what amounts to good, old-fashioned key signings.
Mattel has a free virtual world for pre-teen girls called Barbie’s World that let’s friends talk to their virtual friends using a feature called Secret B Chat. In order to protect these innocents from the bad guys, Mattel only let’s girls chat with people they know in real life.
How do you prove you know someone in real life? Mattel sells a $60 MP3 player that CNN Money lists as one of the 12 best toys of 2007. The MP3 player can be used with an array of fashion accessories (sold separately, I’m sure).
The player also contains an unique identifier. If Betty wants to prove that Veronica is her best friend, they plug Veronica’s Barbie Girl MP3 player into Betty’s docking station and the (Window’s only) Mattel software then links Veronica as one of Betty’s “best friends.” Once Veronica is linked to Betty, they can chat.
Mattel could, of course, do the same thing by letting parents control a whitelist of friends, but that would actually put parents in touch with their kids and avoid an incredibly viral way of selling $60 toys. I can hear Betty whining to her parents already: “But I have to have a Barbie Girls MP3 player or Veronica won’t be my friend and my life will be ruined!”
Phil Windley is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
