Virtual Pets Blog

According to a recent blog post by Kym (the owner of Pinkpt); Neopets’ community isn’t getting any stronger and is slowly going downhill.. Why is this? Well, we believe Neopets started going downhill once the two founders left, Adam and Donna. Not only has Viacom failed to innovate and release new features onto the Neopets site - it’s still lacking a bit. Isn’t neopets one of the biggest and baddest pet sites on the web today?

Well, we thought so too, but they use freezing bots for their members and even if you don’t break a rule, your account will be banned. What happened to Neopets? Why isn’t anyone talking about them anymore? The only people talking about Neopets these days are the fansites that were created to cover everything about Neopets from help, guides to plot coverage. Is neopets just attracting new users and not maintaining its current user base? What gives? Can Neopets once again regain its old glory or is Neopets doomed to continue to fall off without the lack of promotion from its members?

Neopets is relying on its merchandise to promote - and not their members. Why can’t they rely on their members to promote? Aren’t the members the key to Neo’s success - or is the merchandise the key? You tell me, but I believe if Neopets focused more on innovation, and released new features that the users have suggested in the past, then they can really take every small pet site’s users - as well as the growing ones, because Neopets is the first pet site and users will always flock back.

However, ever since we were banned we’ve never turned back. We still talk about Neopets because it’s the largest virtual pet site but other than that, we don’t care about Neopets - we wish they’d do better though and remove the freezing bots; tell the users that Adam and Donna are gone - and start focusing on developing new features instead of trying to implement new virtual worlds which are slated to come out by the end of 2008…

Neopets will always be the biggest virtual pet site with the most flash games - and most attractive, however; shouldn’t they treat the kids with more respect instead of freezing them for no reason?

Since we’re on the topic of Neopets, can they ever be beat?

Why do a lot of pet sites these days steal ideas from Neopets? What is the point? Neopets became a huge success because of its flash games, unique content and plethora of features - and if Neopets never became a success, then pet sites wouldn’t be as popular as they are today. Surely, implementing some of Neopets’ features may help your pet site out in the beginning, but what if Neopets decides to sue you because of their features being copyrighted? Well, you can’t exactly copyright a feature - but Neopets has a few trademarks; Neomail being one of them and a few others.

Implementing a tombola on your pet site is a good idea because Neopets doesn’t have it trademarked, and isn’t exactly a Neo idea. If you create a mail system, don’t name it neomail. Come up with a unique mail name - so that Neopets can’t sue you or issue you a C&D(Cease and desist) letter, which will shut your pet site down regardless of what you have to say.

Neopets was one of the first virtual pet sites to make it big, however; if they can become a huge success you can too. It’s all about promotion - Neopets had it; they continued to promote via tv advertising and all their fansites, however; without promotion your pet site won’t be able to grow.
Neopets struck gold when it released its “help section” which teaches its user how to code html and various other scripts - and users were able to learn to code just by learning html.

However; if your pet site is still new, you might want to see what has made Neopets a huge success - it’s their flash games, it attracts all the kids. They will always grow because of this - and since Neopets has freezing bots, your pet site should rely on staff members to ban, edit, and change members. Do not ever implement freezing bots.

One thing that we think any upcoming pet site owner can learn by Neopets’s success is that anyone can do it. Yes, you can too become the next Neopets, however; don’t ever put your focus on beating Neopets, but put your main focus on developing your own virtual pet site. If you focus on Neopets, you’ll never beat them.

So, our point is, why do a lot of new pet sites tend to copy their ideas from Neopets? Do they think it’ll help their pet site grow?

Neopets has did it again! They’ve released their newest paintbrush which is the Zombie paintbrush. Currently two neopets are able to painted with the new “zombie” paintbrush.
Here’s the zombie paintbrush.

Both the Aisha and the Flotzam can be painted with this new Zombie paintbrush!