On My LEGO Network

I just happened to catch notice of a website called My LEGO Network, a social networking site run by LEGO which seems to be another LEGO Club replacement. It’s still open to testers at the moment, but still seems to have a lot of work done to it so far.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like social networking and the benefits it provides–if you know me, you probably know that I’m a member on Last.fm,  del.icio.us, Digg, and a few others–but this is just ridiculous. For one thing, the target market for LEGO toys is younger children. Shouldn’t they be doing something worthwhile, like playing outside or something? What in the world could a child possibly productively do on a social networking website? Connect with lost friends?

Even if they somehow did have an explanation to be on websites such as these, the things you can do on the website are extremely limited–messages are kept down to a few predefined choices (no surprise there), profile information is restricted to cookie-cutter questions such as “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and “What is your favorite LEGO toy line?”–is there even a “social” aspect to this?

LEGO, please, for all of our sakes, stick more with what you’re doing right–making toys that children enjoy. Just about the last thing that needs to be done with your company is creating a silly website for children to waste their time on.

~ by Michael on October 21, 2007.