Olivia Coy looked into the long, slow decline of Neopets, the virtual pet care and gaming community:

• The Neopets site was once a Wall Street darling. Millions of users visited every day and each stayed for, on average, close to 20 minutes, longer than most others.
• This time was profitable. Games such as “Spider-Man Cheese Nips Hunt” meant that advertizers could target kids while they were having fun with games.
• Neopets was also able to harvest data on its underage users and sell them to advertizers.
• However the site got ahead of itself. It was pressured to release an increasing number of sponsored games which helped the company’s finances but destroyed the in-game economy.
• The games increased the amount of cash available which led to hyper-inflation that meant that new players were priced out of the marketplace.
• While the company tried to institute deflationary monetary policies other problems such as outdated content or overall site neglect kept players away.
• Now Neopets has been sold to an educational software company and may possibly see a revival.

Read about the company, its history, the scientology influences, and much more over here.

Source: The Kernel