A brand new world to hang your virtual hat, RipLounge.com creates a social networking destination that showcases all the right moves in virtual living. RipLounge.com aims to give users a world-class social experience in a virtual world environment.Co-created by Andrew Stern, who has recently been featured on Millionaire Matchmaker, Andrew also owns Seed Corn Advertising. Seed Corn Advertising represents over 6,000 websites and 150 publishers since its founding in 2001.
RipLounge.com's Andrew Stern
Seed Corn Advertising partnered with sister company Stable Media (a developer of online marketing and communities) to provide RipLounge.com users with an engaging social experience that moves music to the front of the virtual world stage.
Club Experience a Mouse Click Away
In RipLounge.com, there are no cover charges, drink minimums, or waiting in long lines outside the club. The site avoids real life clubbing hassles while offering the unique advantages of an online world. In RipLounge, you create your own personal avatars to interact with friends. You can post pictures, video and content while dancing and listening to your favorite artists in streaming audio, chat through IM, VOIP, and video. Users can move their avatars through the different bars, yachts and pools, selecting their destinations based on music and mood.
Chill with some hot poolside action!
RipLounge.com members, who register for free, have access to a video/voice chat with other users in a unique 3-D environment. Version 2.0 enhancements are scheduled to arrive in the next few weeks and will include improved group/chat functionality, tutorials, streaming news feeds, event photos and contests. Take the virtual tour here!
Targeting Your Advertising
Defined by a dynamic interface, advertisers benefit from an opportunity to reach an incredibly targeted demographic with promotion that is geared toward each user. “We’re building on our online advertising experience by offering our clients integrated product placements and other kinds of non-traditional online advertising,” says co-creator Andrew Stern, who founded RipLounge.com with long-time friends Dave Abelson and Joshua Stein.
An Interactive Approach to Advertising
The non-interruptive advertising is embedded within the site’s content. Users experience banners, sponsorship and product placement while navigating their avatars through different bars, yachts and pools, selecting their destinations based on music and mood.
Stable Media has partnered with Hit the Ground Running, a music supervision and consulting company to spin both hits and up-and-coming artists on RipLounge.com. Stable Media, a Studio City, Calif.-based developer of online marketing and communities, its profit model is based on embedded advertising through product placement, sponsorship and banners. More information can be found at www.stablemediamarketing.com.
Getting a Running Start
Seed Corn, named one of Inc. Magazine’s 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies, has the advantage over other start up social networking sites thanks to Seed Corn Advertising’s existing roster of over 300 online advertisers. We’re utilizing our network of ads and databases to promote Rip Lounge, calling on a large base of advertisers we’ve been working with for years,” says Stern.
Keeping it Real
To attract sponsors for RipLounge.com, Stable Media recently hosted a hip, circus themed party for industry professionals attending the Ad Tech convention in San Francisco. Over 1,400 partygoers were entertained by fire breathers, trapeze artists and hula-hoop dancers.
Stable Media considers its real-life presence as critical as its’ virtual and hits the clubs itself, frequently sponsoring events to draw the attention of potential new members. We’re hoping that people take it from a real club on a Saturday night to a virtual club on a Tuesday night,” says Stern. “We’re getting people to visit when they get back to their computers, to connect with people they’ve met, share photos, listen to music and more”.
10,000 and Counting
Membership for RipLounge.com is nearing 10,000. Seed Corn’s goal for RipLounge.com is to reach 100,000 members by the end of 2009. “Users enjoy the site because it’s an exciting way to hear great music, meet new people and talk to friends without spending money and dealing with a cramped and intoxicated bar scene,” says Stern. “It’s the first of its kind, and the way people will reach one another—and advertisers will reach people—into the future”.
www.RipLounge.com
