Jordi Romkema

It’s been a busy month with the launch of the TMF Video Player and then immediately after I was invited by Adobe to join the Adobe AIR Summer Camp in Dinant, Belgium. Three days of AIR programming, training and the occasional paintball sessions. I sure had a lot of fun there and it was great to meet other people interested in creating wonderful AIR applications.

Anyway, this weekend we at MTV Networks went on a three day team building session in Marrakech, Marrocco. We stayed at Club Med La Palmeraie, a little outside of this beautiful city. I took a lot of photos and I’ve uploaded some of them on Flickr. I specifically say ‘some of them’ because I do have more photos but can’t share them. It’s an MTV party after all and what happens in Marrakech stays in Marrakech Click here for the photos.

Around 4000 Nickelodeon fans have helped launch the new Nickelodeon website on Wednesday February 20th. Kids could ‘earn’ puzzle pieces by answering questions together about Nickelodeon characters and shows. When all of the pieces were put together the new site was launched which was much faster than expected because the children gave 72.000 correct answers within just 10 minutes. That’s about 150 correct answers per second! The launch was therefore a great success. Patrick Alders, General Manager North Europe Nickelodeon: “The new and improved website is more visual and interactive to better connect with the way children browse the Internet these days. The site offers children more possibilities to express and develop themselves creatively. With a broad selection of games, video’s and the Cartoon Creator Nickelodeon stimulates creativity.”

The first day
A total of 30.000 children (unique visitors) have visited the website on the first day. On average they have viewed 17 pages per person and stayed around 19 minutes on the site to discover all the new things. The Cartoon Creator was already extremely popular from the moment the new site launched. On this first day around 800 cartoons have been created by enthusiastic SpongeBob Squarepants fans.

The first week
The success of the first day continued the rest of the first week. At the end of the week the new site generated 245.000 unique visitors. On average the visitors stayed around 18 minutes on the website and together they viewed almost four million pages. The average visitor viewed 5.1 videos in TurboNick, Nickelodeon’s online video-on-demand service.

The Cartoon Creator remained successful: in a week the children made 10.383 cartoons! Just like the Cartoon Creator the games remained popular with the kids. The generated great figures: the different games were played 243.000 times by visitors.

Finally the two Nickelodeon sites I mentioned earlier (See: New Nickelodeon sites to launch in 14 days...) have launched succesfully today. You can see them at www.nickelodeon.nl and www.nickelodeon.be, both sites are obviously only in Dutch. Screenshots and more information will follow... but for now, have a piece of cake:

For more pictures, check my Flickr photostream.

Nickelodeon will launch two brand new websites in February in The Netherlands and in Belgium. At nickelodeon.nl and nickelodeon.be the characters and presenters kids see on television will come to life and they can really join in on the action with the innovative new tool called the Cartoon Creator. With the Cartoon Creator the kids are the director of their own SpongeBob Squarepants cartoon. They create the cartoon, animate the actors, change the background music, create the story, in other words: The kids are in charge. Their own cartoon can be just as good as the one you see on television!

Apart from the Cartoon Creator, the website will get a more interactive and social feel. Kids want to be entertained obviously, but on the Internet they especially want to experience something, do something and share it with other kids. That's why there are lots of new options such as weblogs of the presenters, send-a-friend, a new highscore system for games, interactive photo albums, TurboNick (Nickelodeon's video-on-demand player) and the Cartoon Creator. The kids can also create their own myNick page which is a private page where they can manage their favorite Nick games and videos and will always be able to rediscover their own creations.

Also special about the new site is its launch. On February the 20th the site will go down in the morning. From 2 o' clock in the afternoon we trust on all the kids in The Netherlands and in Belgium to help get the new site live. All of the kids who will visit either nickelodeon.nl or nickelodeon.be will be able to answer questions about different Nickelodeon characters. Each correct answer will help to get closer to the end result: piece by piece puzzle pieces will appear with each amount of correct questions from all the kids. If all the puzzle pieces have appeared the site will be accessible for everyone!

Obviously the sites will have Dutch content only but I still wanted to share it because this has been my project since September 2007. Only 14 days to go!