Name of your website?Cackleberries
Your name?
Eronne Ward
Your Location (city, etc)
Burnaby, BC
The safest place for young children to play online.
Cackleberries offers stories, poetry, games, music, animation and much more, in a multi-ethnic, violence and sexuality-free site that is ahead of its time in presentation and operations. Children are absolutely safe while playing in Oville, the vibrant community featured in this living cartoon. 51 rich characters will endear themselves to your young ones and they learn and play everyday with their new friends.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
After raising 3 of my own children and 9 others that were left unloved, it became very apparent to me that the level of violence in these children was spawned through the media. It became my life's goal to create a warm, imaginative environment with somewhat old-fashioned ethics. Childhood needs to once again become a time of innocence and protection. Young children do not need to be exposed to the real world until they are old enough to understand.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Cackleberries is our first website. It has been three years in the building and the site as presented today is approximately 1/2 of phase one in a nine phase plan. Cackleberries is destined to be the millennium Muppets.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
The website is named after the Intellectual Property. The world of Oville, where the Cackleberries, live is the setting for the daily adventures. Members can play, learn and explore with their favourite Cackpals.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We do not advertise or sell to children. We do not cross-link to sites we cannot guarantee. There is absolutely no inappropriate content or behaviours in Oville. Our site is a living cartoon, not a website. The quality of animation is considerably better than most children's sites.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To create a sustainable Canadian industry. Cackleberries website is the cornerstone of our business model, including music, toys & games, animation, clothing etc.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
This project has taken everything we have to give. 100% of time, all our money, all our friends and families money but if we succeed in changing the attitudes towards marketing products for children, it will all be worth it. Cackleberries is not Sponge Bob or Club Penguin. It is built to be a multi-generational sustainable product. We know, even before going to market, that we are successful in building a company we are very proud of.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I'd fast track our animated feature film. I'd develop our 3D environment and build out the balance of the site. I'd advertise to parents around the world by spreading information about protecting children and restoring the innocence of childhood.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Without question. Everything we've built is scalable. Our IT department is ready for the explosion. Our entire sight has been rewritten in Actionscript 3, which our wonderful geeks tell me will grow with us.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Too many to list here. We had huge partnership problems which were dealt with at great cost to the project. We are entertaining a brand new corporate structure and philosophy for which we couldn't get any guidance as no one had done it. The industry is full of parasites and beggars and it's difficult to tell the good guys from the bad. Our industry professionals demand (and in other companies get) huge salaries. Because of our ownership policies we've avoided some of those costs but we've spent millions.
What has been your biggest challenge?
At first it was the children's entertain industries rigid mind-set that you couldn't brand a product on the web. They were wrong but it caused us to spend too much on animation. The second challenge is technology that is slowly being handle. Our flash heavy huge site needs great computers and adsl. As the world upgrades we are running into less problems. All this being said our single biggest problem is funding. Has always been and still is.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
We've just started. We launched our membership program on June 15 and are just beginning site promotion. We don't know what the most successful method will be yet.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Programming is much more complicated than originally thought. Everything takes longer than expected and plagiarism is rampant in the industry. Many of our innovative ideas have been used on other sites. In many cases it could be just a matter of no good idea stands alone but in some cases the text is verbatim.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
The site was launched in August 2004. We intend that it become a multi-generational playground. Out IT expertise will keep us on the cutting edge of technology. Plans for complete 3D presentation (Web 3) are in the works. Multi-media presentation abilities are also being explored.
Protecting Children
Today's teenager will have lived through a media life that is totally inappropriate to create compassionate, caring adults. Each child today witness approximately 40,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence. Talk about desensitization! Disney and the other industry giants hire psychologists and other professionals to analyze children's dreams to better target their advertising campaigns. We have to stop commercializing young children. Their value system is badly skewed by the 'I want' instead of 'I need' mentality. Sustainability requires a change in consumerism, we have to start with the children.
What is your website address?
Cackleberries
