Oh, what the difference of a few months makes. Or, rather, perhaps its just the pull of a web magazine, like Slate. Most recently, Slate has come up with an article heralding the death of email, in the face of a generational shift in communication methods.

Translation: kidz luv IM.

And texting.

And yes, there’s a lot to be said about what the medium means, irrespective of the message.

Which is funny, however, given how this past June Fred Wilson was raked over the coals for talking about how it was easier for digital natives to see and take advantage for the future. I think a lot of bloggers were particularly sensitive over the post, and while yes, age doesn’t matter, in a very real difference, age *does* matter.

(which I discussed over here about 6 months ago as well).

There’s a generation of individuals that are using technology in a way that is completely foreign — even to folks who are “only” 5-10 years their senior. And there’s *another* digital generation that are 5-10 years *their* junior who are facile at using another kind of technology that teenagers aren’t quite as ‘hip’ to — virtual worlds a la Club Penguin.

I could also make hand-waving arguments about how these kinds of interactions might _also_ actually have profound effects on brain development, in the way that both generations interact in their interpersonal relationships, and in so doing, provide a vague (but possibly substantial) argument that there is a real organic impact on these folks.

Which makes, in a round about way, Fred Wilson right: there is a generation of people for whom email is a bit of a relic.  Some older folks have made a similar leap, but by and large its a generational *thing* (see Mat Ingram’s interactions with his own kids), that will allow some of them, by and large to see things that other generations won’t.

You may have heard Club Penguin was sold to Disney for a whopping $700 million penguins dollars. Whooooo, that’s a lot of money.  Who is Club Penguin, you might ask?  Why have I never heard of such a property going for such princely MySpace-ian sums? Remember, MySpace was scooped up for a then-mind-boggling $580 million [either the bubble is inflating, or Club Penguin is *that* important -- more on that in a minute].  Furthermore, why have my favourite bloggers not blogged about it?

First off, let’s get something out of the way.  Club Penguin is a social networking site.  For children.  Dressed in the trappings of a virtual world.  When you sign up, your avatar is a penguin, and you can make your penguin do cool things, and meet other friends, who are, as you might imagine penguins. 

Penguins?

No wonder my favourite bloggers haven’t been writing about it.  Well, if you have been paying attention, there is one that has: Mat Ingram.

In fact, Mat, who for the less informed, is also a technology writer for the Globe and Mail, mentioned it as early as January of this year, and intermittently since then.

But why?  Why bother mentioning a site that only kids will go to?  Probably because of its sheer size, the time spent on site, and what it represents.  Which is probably the reason why Mickey has opened his pockets to pay said shekels to Club Penguin.

And what does it represent?  Maybe the future.  As funny and silly, and *empty* as Second Life is (or, perhaps not), the idea of ‘virtual worlds’ isn’t all that wacky to several ‘web’ generations below ‘virtual’ geezers such as myself.  And this is something that I’ve written about before as well. 

There is an entire generation that doesn’t use email, because they find social networks like MySpace so useful.  That’s probably below me.

Below *THAT* (or maybe several layers below that) are kids who are aged 7-10, who use sites like Club Penguin, which are social networking sites, but use virtual avatars to run around in a virtual world.  South Korea has an analogue, but being several generations evolved than us (from a web perspective anyway), adults actually use the site.  You may have heard about it.  Its called “Cyworld”, and something like 90% of 20-something’s are on it. 

Ninety percent. 

I don’t know if Disney has these kind of numbers floating around their minds, but in many ways this makes a lot of sense from all kinds of perspectives.  It buys them instant credibility amongst their target demographic.  It gets their foot in the door with the whole “social networking thing” AND the whole “virtual worlds” thing as well.  Plus, because of the age group, the cranky old cynic in me says “it gets them when they’re young … really  young”. 

So is Club Penguin worth *more* than MySpace?  Hard to know in bubble-corrected dollars.  And that’s being only half-facetious now.  MySpace’s sale was (and correct me if I’m wrong) was really the first of the Really Big Buys.  YouTube’s sale to Google followed that, but once we crossed that rubicon, those NINE figure buys have only caused valuations for further social networking sites to go up. 

One thing is for sure.  I think many people don’t want to “miss” the boat, and I’m sure this is reflected in all kinds of sentiment from Madison Avenue to Silicon Valley.  But I think there’s something actually different about Club Penguin, in what it represents between virtual worlds and social networking, and what sites like it represent to an entirely new generation — some would say without hyperbole, the next generation — of web users. 

And if that’s the kind of fairie dust Disney’s trying to capture, I’ll second that as a smart move.  (What they end of up doing with it is entirely different proposition.)