Study Shows Children’s Web Sites May Be Entertaining,
But May Also Make Kids Cry
Most Popular Sites Commercialized; Some ‘Sell’ Kids’ Creations Back to Them

YONKERS, New York, Tuesday, May 6 – Publishers of many major children’s Web sites should do a better job disclosing sales and advertising information to parents, especially as more kids at younger ages go online to play and meet friends, says a study released today by Consumer Reports WebWatch and the Mediatech Foundation of Flemington, N.J.
For the study, parents in 10 families used video cameras to keep journals, providing insights into the way children use sites such as Club Penguin, Webkinz, Nick Jr., Barbie.com and others. Footage from those journals, which can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/cwwkids, illustrates how young children respond to advertising and marketing tactics online.

In its heyday, the Navigator enjoyed a commanding 90% share of the browser market, which helped turn Netscape into the Google with of its day, an Internet 1.0 darling whose astronomical 1995 IPO helped launch the (first) Internet bubble.

Netscape’s success didn’t go unnoticed by Microsoft, which had been slow to realize the potential of the Internet—not to mention the threat to its bottom line. The software giant waged a brutal and successful campaign to supplant the Navigator with its Internet Explorer by bundling it as part of its ubiquitous Windows operating system. Netscape's Navigator simply couldn’t compete with a free browser installed on 90% of all PCs, and by 1998, lost the so-called browser war and surrendered the top spot to the Internet Explorer.

Recently, we came across a case in point while reviewing a site for ShopSmart magazine, namely, My M&M’s.

One of the first things we look for when asked to review a site is an indication of ownership, and you’d be surprised how many sites simply don’t disclose this simple—but crucial—bit of information. If you're ever wondering if a site is credible and you can't figure out who owns it, stop wondering and click away.

Most sites (like WebWatch), tend to disclose their ownership in an “About Us” section. And while My M&M’s lists its parent company, Mars, Inc. at the bottom of the site, it goes one step further with a site owner link at the bottom of every page.

We wish more sites made it this easy to determine who the owner is and how to contact them, without forcing users to click around the site or scroll to the bottom of the privacy policy, where far too many sites tend to bury this information.

COMMENTS OF CONSUMER REPORTS WEBWATCH,

Consumers Union of the U.S., On ICANN Joint Project Agreement with U.S. Commerce Department

February 14, 2008

Consumer Reports WebWatch of the Consumers Union, representing 9 million consumers in the United States and Canada, supports ICANN’s efforts to evolve and move forward toward an existence apart from the JPA agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce. However, at this mid-term review phase, we do not believe the organization is ready to function without a similar accountability mechanism to the JPA in place. Major changes need to occur within the organization to assure more efficient and meaningful user community representation, with long-term guarantees that such representation would endure unforeseen scenarios in the future.