Mon, 15th December 2008

goSupermodel.co.uk is making its entry into the UK market

goSupermodel owned by watAgame, Danish new media company backed by venture capital firm, Accel Partners, today announces its launch into the UK market. Having already proven its girl concept across Europe, the scheduled UK consumer launch of goSupermodel.co.uk will take place Q1 2009 after a short beta launch late November 2009.

Following its success in Scandinavian territories since 2006 and 2007, now achieving between 30-60% penetration in these markets, goSupermodel has rapidly grown into the favourite hangout for teenage girls with 2 million unique visitors and 6 million registered users. The service is today localized in 8 territories; Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland, Germany, France, and Spain.

goSupermodel provides the ideal platform for girls with a combination of networking and communication tools as well as interactive multi player games built to stimulate friendship and develop interpersonal skills. goSupermodel is driven by user demand and interests, inspiring and encouraging girls to develop their own creative content.

Henrik Riis, CEO and Founder of watAgame comments; "It is our vision to win the hearts and minds of all teenage girls. We are very committed to offering a destination that inspires creativity, confidence and self esteem by empowering the users in a controlled and friendly environment."

Online safety is at the forefront of all activity and goSupermodel have an advanced safety system consisting of 24 hour automatic surveillance combined with human moderation and safety awareness campaigns. watAgame are extremely committed to strengthening online safety for children within society and are collaborating with expert groups such as Save the Children in order to achieve this.

Heikki Makijarvi, from Accel Partners comments; "We know that teens now spend more time online than with any other media. The key differentiator with goSupermodel is that they have targeted a niche demographic of younger teenage girls and given the vulnerable nature of this audience online watAgame has invested a great deal of energy and resources into ensuring user safety. The rapid growth of the community and their successes in generating solid revenue show that goSupermodel is the new generation of niche social networking."

Membership for goSupermodel is free and allows access to all features which includes creating and customizing an avatar, playing games and interacting and earning goMoney, the site's virtual currency. For those girls' who wish to spend more on the site, additional goMoney can be purchased.

The kids, tweens and teens virtual worlds sector is a category increasing rapidly in size. According to virtual world's consultancy K Zero, there are already over 35m unique accounts globally with a predicted total of 150m by 2010. There are a high number of existing worlds plus worlds in development and growth segments in this space include virtual worlds based