Like many community sites, the traffic has grown via word of mouth. Some banner ad swaps have been done, but mainly it's like Habbo, friends telling friends to join or clicking on syndicated versions of Urbaniacs games on fans' MySpace or personal website pages. However, because the site has grown to the point where it's hard for two people to handle, Fisher and Collier are in talks with partners to infuse the company with some marketing dollars and additional resources, helping the site get to critical mass faster.

When asked about whether taking the Urbaniacs brand to another medium was part of the original plan, Fisher said, "Part of the inspiration behind Urbaniacs was the fact that there has been so much cannibalization in the kids industry that it has become increasingly difficult to really create and control and sell a show and be part of the creative process on an animated series."

Unlike others sites that have dozens of characters, Urbaniacs core 15 characters "have personalities and have likes and dislikes. They have strengths and weaknesses. In building the characters, we kind of built it as if we were building a TV show and just allowed users to take our foundation and completely personalize that experience. So yes, it would be fantastic if one day there were an Urbaniacs movie or TV show. We built it so that it would be easy to translate to offline media."

Neopets is such an established brand that the company signed a coveted deal with McDonald's that brought virtual characters to Happy Meals.

Already in works on making it's jump to offline media with a feature film deal set up at Warner Bros., Neopets is the leader in the field, bringing in 11 million visitors a month. Started in 1999 as a private company, Neopets was bought by MTV Networks in 2005, solidifying the importance online communities have to major media firms as well as Neopets strength as a brand.

From the start, Neopets has been operating on an advertising business model, which recently has been supplemented by licensing deals. Like Habbo, Neopets plans to launch virtual item sales later in the year. This will be a separate economy from its free NeoPoints system, where users will be able to buy premium virtual items with cash.

Kyra E. Reppen, svp/gm of NeoPets, said that the site's games are the most popular section followed closely by social activities. Reppen added, "Different members play the site differently. You could have two different members having almost entirely different experiences playing the site. But there is something unique in Neopets in that it's one global economy. So while you might see people doing things in different countries, everybody is still part of the same community simultaneously."

Another unique fact about Neopets is its stickiness, which is the amount of time spent by each user on the site. By far one of the stickiest sites on the Web, Neopets users spend an average of four hours on the site per day. So once Neopets has a user, they stay for a while and much like many other community sites new users are coming via word of mouth. The site launched with no advertising and only recently has started marketing initiatives.

Like Fisher stated, users really make each online community. Neopets fans not only invite their friends to join, but have created hundreds of fan sites, which only help extend and grow the brand. In world, users are driving the world via contests and battles. Members have created 22 million shops within the persistent world and more than 10,000 user submissions are received per month. Neopets the company helps these activities by providing users with the tools they need to customize their experience as much as they can, such as allowing members to create their own homepages called, "user look-ups."

When asked about Neopets demographics, Reppen said, "It's fascinating actually, because it's a wide demo. I would say the core is around 10 to 14 years old, but we also have a strong and loyal teenager and actually even an adult audience that defies what you may assume looking at the site."

However, its wide demo doesn't mean Neopets doesn't have safeguards in place to protect its younger users. Reppen said Neopets' communications tools are only available to kids 13 and up or kids under 13 whose parents have given permission. In addition, the communication tools have a built in filtering system and the company does monitor.