The advantages of having a Zwinky.

Although along with a variety of other social networking sites, Zwinky provides its users with the opportunity to meet new people and socialize. Zwinky allows users more flexibility than most social networking sites, this flexibility is achieved because it is possible to move your Zwinky avatar onto other websites. This is one of the reasons why Zwinky is so popular. Not only does Zwinky provide flexibility in the way you use your avatar, there is now the additional fun of Zwinktopia. A fun-filled virtual world designed specifically for the Zwinky.

Zwinky and Club Penguin have a lot of features in common. Both of these websites require you to create your very own personalized avatar. Both sites give you the opportunity to move around within a virtual world. Each of these applications also gives users the opportunity to socialize and meet new people, as well as play a variety of games. The key difference between these two services is the fact that Club Penguin is designed by Disney and aimed at children between the ages of 6-12, while Zwinky requires children to be at least 13 years old to join.

Zwinkies creators advertise the fact that you can create your own personalized avatar in any way that you like, thus your avatar could be who you are now, who you want to be in the future or someone else entirely. Critics have suggested that Zwinky does not promote the real world values they believe it should and that it places too much emphasis on consumerism. It is however the case that Zwinky had by August 2008 attracted over 16 million users, a number that is constantly growing. Zwinky has been so popular in fact that Zwinky creators have brought out a new version, aimed at younger girls called Zwinky Cuties.

Additional Resources:
Zwinktopia
How Do You Create a Zwinky?

What is Zwinktopia?

Zwinky.com started out as a website that gave you the ability to create you're very own personalized avatar. You could choose from a variety of accessories, outfits and physical features for your Zwinky. After creating your Zwinky you could use it as a cartoon representation of yourself on social networking such as MySpace.

However, on the previous page we talked about moving your Zwinky avatar around. If you embed your Zwinky into a Web page, isn't it just stuck there, with nowhere to go?

Inter ActiveCorp (IAC), the company that created and manages Zwinky, decided to create a virtual world for Zwinky fans to explore. This world provides a forum in which Zwinky users can interact with each other. This virtual world, Zwinktopia is made up of a number of locations, many of which replicate real-world experiences, including cafes, gaming arcades and shopping malls. Zwinktopia gives Zwinky fans the opportunity to take their personalized Zwinky avatar into an animated virtual reality world that they can play games, chat with other Zwinky users and best of all explore. Listed below are a number of the main areas Zwinktopia users can explore:

Zwinktopia includes a massive shopping mall, the Zwinchester. Here you can find both the East Mall and the West Mall. These two malls comprise a number of shops, such as the University Club or The Lair, there's even a pizzeria!

Zwinktopia also has an awesome gaming arcade, Zarcadia. Zwinky fans can play all sorts of games to earn ZBucks (we'll learn more on that later), you can also visit Kingpin Korner, Zwinktopia's bowling alley.

Zwinktopia also includes a university-like location known as ZSU. ZSU is centred around the ZSU Quad which is surrounded by the four key dorms: the Omegaad, the Dungeon, the Abacus and the End Zone. Zwinkies can hang out in the common rooms chatting with other Zwinkies, or they can just chill in their rooms, which can be bought with ZBucks.

The Caf is a campus cafeteria at ZSU, where digital burgers and sodas are sold. There's also Java Jolt, a coffee house that has games inside.

You can move your Zwinky to any of these fun places using the key Zwinktopia map.

In all of these areas you will be able to either earn or spend ZBucks. So we have to ask the question, how do you use ZBucks and the Zwinky ZCard?

Get your own zwinkies

Additional resources:
Create and Use Your Zwinky
How Do You Create a Zwinky?

How to use Zwinkies

In 2006, IAC Interactive created Zwinky to appeal to teenagers, for whom self-expression can be essential. Featuring fully customizable characters and accessories, Zwinkies are uniquely designed avatars. Every aspect of your zwinky can be customized to suit you, hair color, skin, eyes, glasses, shirts, pants and shoes.

If you want to have your own zwinky your need to download a small program that needs to be installed on your computer.This may be a slightly unfamiliar approach for members of other social networking sites -- most simply request that you create a username and password and fill in some personal information, including e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Zwinky, however, requires you to download a Zwinky icon onto your Web browser, which users click on to access the program's interface.

When you've successfully installed the Zwinky program and opened up the program window, it's time to customize your Zwinky character. Every user has their very own wardrobe to use to dress their zwinkies with, you can have access to this wardrobe simple by clicking "open wardrode" button that is located near the bottom the the monitor. You can manipulate a Zwinky's appearance to make it look however you want, also the user can decide what gender you zwinkies are, what skin tone they have, even the hair style and hair color they have.

Zwinky avatars can move around their own virtual universe, and the main purpose of the site is for users to interact with other Zwinkies, play games and purchase digital goods.If you want to move your zwinkies around the screen all you need to do is move your mouse curser to where you want your zwinky to move to and click the mouse button. You can meet new people or see a list of the ones you already have by clicking on the "View/Add Friends" button at the bottom of the interface. This button allows you to either send an e-mail to a fellow Zwinky requesting friendship or to see where in zwinkies world your friends are. If a friend is online, clicking on your friend can bring you straight to him or her, call up that person's profile or let you send that person a Znote.

Of course, if another Zwinky bothers you or makes you uncomfortable, you have the option of blocking him or her from chatting with you. By clicking on that person's avatar and selecting "Block," that Zwinky will no longer be able to communicate with you or see your profile.

Additional Resources:
How Do You Create a Zwinky?
How Do You Create a Zwinky?