[YBPoohbear]

Jefferson Graham USA TODAY

ATLANTA -- A few years ago, media types salivated over the Internet, talking of creating hundreds of online networks, places where we could watch hours of original programming and communicate with our favorite stars.

Then the dot-com bubble burst; millions of dollars and jobs were lost, and dreams died.

Try telling this to kids. They haven't heard the news.

While many surfers have turned an uninterested eye and ear to the promotion-heavy Web sites run by networks, the sites for The Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon have defied the odds and become the most visited TV network entertainment sites.

''At a time when Internet usage is up 30%, we're up 53% and adding 100,000 new users a week,'' says Cartoon Network's Paul Condolora.

Their secret: an eBay-like approach to collecting and trading digital images of cartoon characters that doesn't require money. Cartoon Orbit, which began in November 2000, is the name of Cartoon Network's online community for what it calls cToons. These include pictures of characters such as Johnny Bravo and the Powerpuff Girls. To obtain them, visitors collect points for viewing areas of the Web site or for watching certain TV shows, and then you trade them with other kids, like actual baseball cards.

''It turns our characters into games, and kids love it,'' Condolora says.

Rival network Nickelodeon offered its take on the same concept in May 2001, the same month the highly promoted ''All Growed Up'' episode of Rugrats was set to air. It showed kids what babies Tommy, Chuckie and Angelica looked like as grade schoolers. The only place to catch their first glimpse of the kids was by collecting points online for Nick's e-Collectibles, again by visiting specific areas of the site.

''It was a huge ratings event for the network and helped our online traffic significantly,'' Nick's Jason Root says.

These cards don't really exist; once you buy them, you can't save them to your hard drive. Online, users are anonymous -- assigned cartoon nicknames and not allowed to have real chats with others. But that hasn't stopped millions of kids from spending hours at these sites.

Top-rated kids network Nick, which attracts 978,000 young viewers (ages 2-11) daily on TV, also is the top-rated TV network entertainment Web site, according to Web-tracking firm ComScore. Cartoon Network follows, then Disney Channel's Zoog Disney.

Edward Baldasaro, an eighth-grader in Londonderry, N.H., has collected more than 1,000 cToons and has even created a Web site called cToons R Us ( ctoons-r-us.cjb.net), with message boards and tips on collecting. The 13-year-old, who hopes to be a comedian when he grows up, collects the digital cards ''because it's a fun way to pass time and meet people.'' He talks to other kids on his own site about point strategy and mutual 'toon favorites.

It's this sort of gameplay that has paid off for Cartoon Network, Nick and Disney's Zoog, where program promotion is strong, but kids can spend lots of time playing cursor games based on their favorite shows, picking up trivia or answering polls on a host of topics.

While Root says Nick is talking about ''possibly using the (e-Collectible) cards themselves for something kids could drag into a game,'' Cartoon says it will introduce what it calls G-Toons in October. Visitors to the site will be able to compete with other kids in game play based on rules that will be listed on the cards.

Which means even more hours for parents to fret about how long their kids are spending online.

''Kids are susceptible to developing relationships with fantasy characters that are almost scary in their intensity,'' Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff says. ''The Web is great for reinforcing that. When you add in the competition of collecting pictures, this gets them hooked. From a business perspective, that's great. But do I really want my kid screaming for a picture of a cartoon character?''

Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( news - web sites) professor Henry Jenkins, who is writing a book about media convergence, says what Cartoon and Nick are doing is just an extension of the Pokémon phenomenon.

''For most American kids, it's not even clear what medium it exists in. It started as card game, then became a video game, cartoons and movies,'' he says. ''Contemporary kids have grown up in transmedia environments. These kids will want to see shows like The West Wing ( news - web sites) on many different media when they get older, because that's how they grew up.''

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[MouseMan]

Yup! These sites and their cards/games are like homing beacons to kids! they flock to these things like crazy! Fun as they are...they're actually a great marketing/advertising potential that sites like Nick and Cartoon Network are using with great skill!