FIND A GAP AND FILL IT

We all have different navigation routines, our own bookmarks and favorites (although these are to disappear and be replaced by tagging of URLs, as in the new Firefox 3 release). These are mostly specialized websites, sources of information we believe that are reliable, on very specific subjects. About our jobs, our favorite sports, our hobbies. Stuff we like. Because we all know it’s not easy to please everybody.

So, it seems clear that the shortest way to online success is not through trying to be a reference to a majority, but instead to a global minority who is short on content and eager to be targeted. Those are the best online business opportunities out there.

I chose Stardoll because it’s such a great example: an online community for “tweens” (girls aged 7-17) that is thriving against all odds on a mostly male-oriented, male-designed World Wide Web.

Who could have guessed that so many girls all over the world liked spending time online, playing games, chatting, creating avatar dolls, dress them up and spend millions of dollars while doing it?

Well, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures did… they helped to finance this Scandinavian project with 10 million dollars.

Today Stardoll has more than 12 million users all over the world, including the Vatican! It has real-world designer boutiques like DKNY, with replicas of real designer clothes users can buy for their dolls… they even have a virtual flea market where girls sell their avatar-used clothes to other community members. The community newsletter is designed to resemble a fashion magazine, and girls dream with the day when they (their avatar, I mean) will make the cover.

Celebrities like Avril Lavigne are signing contracts with Stardoll for branding of virtual wardrobe and decoration of the avatars’ virtual bedrooms.

Eventually, they had to impose a monthly purchase limit of Stardoll’s virtual currency, because the girls where just spending too much money with their parent’s credit cards…

So this is how an idea that probably would be considered a total failure by most conservative minds has proved to be a highly profitable business.

I guess this proves that the secret of online success is simply to try to serve well the neglected global online minorities.