Here Comes Planet Cazmo & They Are Stealing Penguins!

PLANET CAZMO excites thousands of young gamers looking for their next great online hang-out - Pileated Pictures has also been building PLANET CAZMO, a browser-based Virtual World for Teens and Tweens. In December they quietly went into open beta, in stealth mode, hoping to attract more users to test their technology and game. "Perhaps the most interesting result to come out of the test period," reported Levine, "is that we never had the chance to officially announce the program -- it took off as a result of just a couple blog posts, followed by the enthusiasm of a crowd of players. Its just been growing steadily in a true viral nature since then, and is showing no signs of slowing down." PLANET CAZMO was scheduled to launch the official Beta program at the beginning of 2008 with the intention of inviting a few thousand testers. But during the last week of 2007 a handful of young gamers discovered the web site, entered the world, loved it, and spread the word via the social Web and telling their friends. "Just a couple blog posts on a popular Club Penguin forum generated a wave of viral energy," explains Levine. Within 48 hours there were several thousand PLANET CAZMO enthusiasts, "many of whom went on to publish or participate in one of the dozens of blogs that soon surfaced to talk about the product. In short order, many more users found us through these consumer-created channels. The response has been amazing, and with virtually no promotional effort on our part. We can't wait to see what happens as we move from Beta to the official launch, and deploy our own strategic marketing plan. We're very encouraged." At the end of the six-week testing period, PLANET CAZMO is approaching hundreds of thousands of unique users from 94 countries. By their own initiative, the PLANET CAZMO testers have started almost 700 online discussions and posted more than 100 online videos which have been viewed more than 8,000 times. Levine says the PLANET CAZMO development team has used the beta tester feedback to uncover insights about the interests of the youth social gaming audience, and is presently completing the PLANET CAZMO 1.0 version scheduled to launch during the second quarter of 2008.