I had a conversation with my niece, Stephanie, yesterday about websites. Kind of trippy! She’s only 5 and to have her spouting off URLs was astonishing. Her favorite site is www.nickjr.com. I told her that I make websites and she got really excited… even though I didn’t make nickjr.com. It made me really think about companies like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and Disney who need to to market internet sites to very young kids. Like the URLs must be short and easily typed, the site must be exciting to a kid and so simple to navigate. I young child needs to be able to get on the site and click on what they want without even being able to read. And how does she find out website addresses? TV. So if cartoon network says “go to www.cartoonnetwork.com” they have to put it up on the screen because little kids can’t spell “cartoon network” and it has to be on the screen long enough for a little kid in his/her little kid writing to be able to copy it down. It’s a whole new ballgame from what I’m used to dealing with in web development.

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