Tootsville is a new virtual world for children ages 6-14 that’s very similar to Disney’s online cash cows ToonTown and ClubPenguin (which they purchased for $700 million).

The reference to Disney is important to note because monetization is obviously extremely important to Tootsville. This is evident by the fact that kids cannot really do many of the fun things the site has to offer without their parents ponying up some money on a monthly or annual basis.

These premium accounts range from $5.95 per month up to $57.98 annually. Here are some of the things your kids CAN’T do unless you upgrade to a premium account: Walk on 2 legs, Dress up your toot, buy clothes or furniture, decorite your house, attend special events, collect pivitz, play premium games and safe chat with friends. I know, then what CAN they do? The answer: not a whole lot really. 

Speaking of money, since the characters in Tootsville are a bunch of colorful elephants, the currency they use is in the form of peanuts. Kids get a bunch of peanuts if their parents subscribe to the more expensive premiere plans, naturally. This is important because this is what they use to buy objects such as clothes for their elephant or furniture for thier house. Some might say this is a good way to teach children the value of money and how to spend wisely. 

On the positive side of things, the site is full of bright colorful worlds and loaded with activities (some are even free!). Kids can easily chat with other “toots” and checkout places together. The good news is that there are ways for kids to earn peanuts by doing certain things. For example, by going to the water fountain (see image above) and making a wish you quickly make 19 peanuts. 

Tootsville’s goal is to mix educational lessons with entertainment as displayed throughout the site. The Tootering program is scheduled for release for spring 2009 and the Teacher’s Pet Program will emphasize the fun in learning, at home, and in the classroom. 

If you’re a parent with children that enjoy playing online, then safe sites like Tootsville and the ones from Disney provide a service that’ll provide fun for kids and peace of mind for parents. When you look at things that way, then the small cost of membership is well worth it.

Source:Mashable!

This week’s release of AIM for Mac 1.0 Beta might strike some as strange, given the fact that it’s 2008 and Mac OS X users have had years to grow accustomed to things like Apple’s iChat client and third-party creations like Adium, both of which have support for the protocol. But AOL insists that it is “one of the most requested applications from our users.” Because AIM for iPhone has been a popular download, apparently.

To be frank, there isn’t anything thoroughly impressive about this release - at least not in the way of outstanding features. While the company offers a Windows-friendly client that provides things like VoIP and video chat, as with many other messaging services on the Web, including Skype, users of AIM for Mac 1.0 Beta will have to remain satisfied with file transfers, AIM groups and AIM Blast groups and connections to AOL mailboxes and so forth (Just to note, personal experience has routinely shown the inability to successfully transfer files via AIM.).

If nothing else, AIM for Mac 1.0 Beta can simply be thought of as an option for those Mac users searching for AOL branding and find its heavily aged and underdeveloped predecessor, AIM 4.7 for Macintosh, too old and too tired and not thematically sufficient to run with other Tiger- and Leopard-level applications with at least some semblance of visual congruity.

AOL has announced the launch of a new flash-based instant messaging application today. AIM Express allows you to do everything you can in the normal AIM client inside of a Web browser. In my testing this morning, I found it to work very well. As you chat with more people, tabs show up on the top of the application so you can jump back and forth. Everything is contained inside of the one Flash application.

I wonder if they could port this to a desktop app using Adobe AIR as it would allow everything to be contained inside the app instead of opening windows for each current chat. The new AIM Express also allows for text messaging using SMS for friends that are offline.

AOL also announced the launch of an updated Windows Mobile client. The new client includes ads from AOL’s Platform-A division.

Other companies in the Web IM and chat space include current CN sponsor eBuddy and Meebo.

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NY-based BricaBox which closed its doors last month, is now back as an open source platform. CEO Nate Westhimer explains, "I’ve heard from a number of people that open sourcing — or "freeing" — the code would be a good way to let the dream live on. After speaking with with several folks in the open source and free software communities, I believe this is the right thing to do."

Nate is now looking for developers to help with the forward progress of open sourcing the BricaBox code. I need to be honest here. I don’t think this is a wise move. First, Nate has already moved on and will he really want to be attached to BricaBox going forward? Second, was the application ever really finished? Nate shared the lessons he learned by running BricaBox and that should have been the end of it - or perhaps a full sale of IP and domain. What I think would have made sense is to offer code snippets that developers could use in their applications like the Google Maps mashup, etc.

It will be interesting to see what the open source experts at Ostatic think of this move. Check out all of our BricaBox coverage.

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Source:CenterNetworks

Amsterdam-based chat service eBuddy is announcing this morning that they have hit the 1 billion mobile messages sent using their service each month. In fact, this month I am told that it’s 1.1 billion mobile messages. They have also shared that the eBuddy mobile client has been downloaded over 5 million times and 2 million unique users have sent the above 1.1 billion mobile messages.

eBuddy CEO Jan-Joost Rueb tells me that the mobile Web client has been used by 600,000 iPhone users and by over a million Sony PSP users to-date.

eBuddy is also announcing the launch of updated software for both their J2ME and mobile Internet browser clients. The J2ME client has been updated with a new interface and support for eBuddy ID which allows for a user to connect to multiple networks using one eBuddy account.

It’s interesting to watch eBuddy and Meebo take different paths over the last year and yet both are successful with thier product roadmaps. Check out all of our eBuddy coverage including our interview with Rueb.

Editor’s note: eBuddy is a current sponsor of CenterNetworks.

Spleak Media Network, which started last year with the single launch of CelebSpleak, has been adding more and more niche themes to its growing network of communities. The latest to join the network are StyleSpleak, TVSpleak, and GameSpleak, bringing the total number of niche “spleaks” to six.

As with the other Spleak communities, the newcomers will feature integrated content sharing through multiple chat clients, publishing related news across the Web in an interactive format that combines user-generated content with editorial articles. The result is a multi-faceted distribution service that encourages contributions from anyone that has something more to add. A number of mainstream publications have jumped on board, from Hearst to Fox Sports, offering their news content to go alongside user-generated content, all within these themed Spleaks that are accessible to users in a number of ways.

Spleak began as an AIM application, delivering news bites in an easily consumed fashion. With all the instant messaging platform options now available, and Spleak’s growing Web and mobile presence, now is a good time for Spleak to continue its expansion, as it’s better able to deliver news directly to users in a growing number of interactive ways. I think these recent vertical additions are also good topics given the audience and distribution of Spleak content, with a narrowing focus on the entertainment sector. Now that Spleak has established a good set of verticals for its expansion, I imagine deeper integration with mobile and social networks will be a growing area of interest for the company as well.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Spleak Verticals: Sports and PoliticsSpleak Lands Hearst for Hybrid Publishing NetworkSpleak: IM Gossip Bot is Now a Full-Fledged Media NetworkWishpot Closes Series A with an Extra $1 MillionKosmix Raises $10M for Search VerticalsDigg’s New Verticals To Launch This MonthHearst and Jango Launch Celeb Jukebox. Listen to What the Stars Like.

Yesterday I met with Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg who took me through some new Meebo functionality coming this fall. The new service offering is called Meebo Community IM and it’s pretty sweet. Here’s the short description of Meebo Community IM: integrated 1-1 instant messaging for sites that have registered members. The Meebo Community IM works across sites so you can actually view your buddies on all of the partner sites.

The initial launch partners include companies like Flixster, myYearbook and Sugar Publishing. Game aggregator AddictingGames is also a launch partner. Seth tells me that they can "easily" launch sites with small amounts of traffic and are working to support much larger sites as well. Meebo’s SparkAds program will deliver ads inside of the chat and the revenue will be shared with the launch partners. To signup as a partner site, go to meebo.com/communityim.

When you visit a partner site, a small toolbar will appear at the bottom of the screen. This is the chat bar and will allow you to see your buddies that are online currently. If your buddies are offline, you can leave them a message and it will be delivered when they sign on. The most interesting part is that you can "pop-out" the toolbar and so you can chat and interact with your buddies on the partner sites even when you aren’t actually on the sites themselves. The toolbar looks very much like the Facebook IM toolbar. I’ve embedded some screenshots of how the functionality will work below.

In version 2 of the Meebo Community IM platform, you will be able to exchange your social graph across multiple partner sites. If you are on site A, you will be able to see and chat with your buddies on sites B and C. The friends lists come from the friends on each of the partner sites.

What makes the Meebo Community IM exciting is that any site that has members can now offer this new social layer with very little technical work and could heavily increase the usage of the site.

Seth left me by noting that they are looking for talented engineers. If you are interested, give Seth a ring.

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Userplane has announced a distribution deal this morning wth ConVerdge. ConVerdge is a white label social networking provider focusing on the community side of the house.

The first two Userplane products to be integrated are Webchat2 and Webmessenger2. Webchat2 is a text, video and voice widget while Webmessenger2 is an instant messaging product. Userplane says further distribution with ConVerdge will be coming soon.

While not directly mentioned, Userplane’s social ad network will certainly play a role in this distribution. Their ad network serves over 500 million ads a month to over 50 million monthly users. This could lead to incremental revenue for the ConVerdge sites that load the Userplane tools.

The first ConVerdge site they have rolled out this new functionality is the Mashable community site. The Mashable community currently shows over 60,000 members (I am guessing 10-15% are active).

To learn more about Userplane, check out our Conversation With Userplane CEO Michael Jones.

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Instant messaging and chat application provider Meebo is announcing a variety of social networking partnerships today. The companies announced today include Buddy Media, Commagere Ventures, FrozenBear, K-Factor Media, Mesmo TV, Rockstarted, Spicerack Media, Trippert Labs, and Unit 501. The partnership brings syndication to the Meebo Rooms product inside of the various social applications.

The company reports 100 million user minutes spent engaged with partner applications, the average person at Meebo.com spends over two hours on the site per day, and Meebo handles conversations consisting of over 5 billion messages per month.

Earlier this month Meebo launched their Meebo Marketing Platform include SparkAds. Check out our interview with Meebo founder Seth Sternberg.

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