Moshi Monsters Reveals Plans to Move Into Online Television With a Free iPlayer-Style Service

written by: Gianluigi Cuccureddu

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Published on Monday, 04 April 2011 14:24

Moshi Monsters is the UK social networking website for children, which started in 2008, invites children to adopt a monster, play games and communicate with each other.

The online TV player, Moshi TV, will include cartoons of popular Moshi characters, or "moshlings", such as Lady Googoo, Dustbin Beaver and 49 Pence, as well as animations uploaded by users. Moshi TV has the advantage of tapping into an existing audience of nearly 38m registered users worldwide, mostly aged between six and 11.

Michael Acton Smith, founder of parent company Mind Candy, said:

"That's how kids want to enjoy media. They don't want to sit and be broadcast to – they want to interact and share and comment. We're flipping traditional TV on its head and letting the kids decide what's popular by voting things up and making them more discoverable."

A blue ocean approach for sure, comparing it to the horizontal approaches by Zynga and Facebook, Smith said:

"The internet is a winner-takes-all market. Facebook has won social, LinkedIn has won business and Zynga has won social gaming. But no one has gone deep in the kids' space, even though it's a multibillion offline industry. We want to be the top player so we're expanding rapidly."

Acton Smith will be speaking during two sessions at the marketplace: Digital Distribution: Monetising Content on New Platforms (Monday April 4th, 3.15pm) and Connected Creativity Forum: Innovation from Around the World (Tuesday April 5th, 4.10pm).