Suddenly, Whyville is popping up all over my radar. A recommendation from a colleague. This article in Adotas. Today’s article in C|Net. The timing certainly seems right for a MySpace alternative that’s safe for kids, though the site seems to be more like NeoPets than MySpace. There are sites like this one for Whyville cheats (always a good measure of a site’s viability) and trusted brands like Adobe and the J. Paul Getty Trust are involved … but something’s not quite passing the smell test.

This Virtual Worlds Review page on Whyville says the site launched in 1999, and was averaging 22,000 visitors a day in 2003. But the site itself looks like it was designed in 1999, with not much attention paid to the look since then. The current flurry of articles about Whyville seems to be the first news generated by the site in several years, which makes me wonder: Is piggybacking on the MySpace furor to get stories a last gasp for breath before shuttering the site? And when you go to visit the site of the company that launched Whyville, you’re taken to what appears to be a keyword advertising link farm. Hmmmmm.

JUNE 16 UPDATE: Be sure to click on the comments link below. I appreciate Whyville CEO Jim Bower taking the time to post. His note begs this takeaway for marketers, too: DNS issues can make you look really bad.

MySpace seems to be the Brangelina of the online world. Hardly a day goes by without another batch of stories about kids posting there, marketers advertising there or predators stalking there.

But how many people actually use MySpace?

On episode 11 of Cranky Geeks, John Dvorak and his fellow cranks repeatedly said that MySpace has 50 million users. Back in February, MSNBC said more than 54 million users. MySpace itself claims north of 82 million.

The numbers suggest a certain level of MySpace hysteria. But what do they really mean for marketers like Burger King or you or me? Not much, I suspect.

How many MySpace pages are spoof pages of friends and celebrities (like this one of George Bush)? How many pages are created and abandoned? How many people have multiple accounts? How many are created by other marketers large and small (like this one of Shakespeare)?

And there’s this: A close look at the results of several random searches of MySpace users suggests to me that about 25% of all registered users haven’t even logged in over the past year.

What really matters for marketers is: How many active daily users does MySpace have? How many users are genuinely engaged in the service? How many people reside in the geographic area where the marketing message posted on MySpace has any relevance? (There are thousands of MySpace users in Latvia, or so their profiles claim.)

Or maybe these more practical questions don’t matter at all. The cost of a company setting up a MySpace profile is negligible. It gives the trade press a hook to say the company is on the cutting edge. It gives the ad agency a hook to say they’re reaching the kids. It builds buzz … or does it?

Takeaway for marketers: Getting involved in the MySpace space? Don’t take any numbers you hear at face value.

Yesterday, I recommended digg to you. Today, another recommendation: Clipmarks. It’s pretty cool, and playing with it a bit is the best way to see how cool it is (it’s the comment component I really like). Here’s how they describe themselves:

“Clipmarks is not a bookmarking solution! Clipmarks is about breaking down the web into pieces instead of pages. When you find something in a web page that interests you, clip it. By adding tags to clipmarks, you’re able to create your own searchable collection of things you’ve clipped from the web. Clipmarks is also about seeing and discussing things that other people are clipping.”

If you’re not including digg as one of your regularly scheduled online information sources, you need to. As they define themselves in their FAQ:

“Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.”

Here’s an interesting article about Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick jumping on a hot issue — in this case, the furor over MySpace. The suggested legislation defines “commercial social networking websites” and “chat rooms,” and as this C|Net article points out, could affect not just MySpace, but a wide range of online services, from AOL to Xbox 360.

But here’s one more piece of language in the bill that ought to be defined: “material that is harmful to minors.” What does that mean, and who makes that determination? I’ve placed two calls to Rep. Fitzpatrick’s offices requesting an answer to that question; should one come, I’ll post it here.