We got more than 1,000 consent calls from parents. We haven't done any significant advertising yet. Parents choose who gets to be on their children's lists, so they exchange emails only with people on the pre-approved list. The same goes for private chat rooms and discussion boards. Surf Monkey's new fun feature is avatar-based chat.
Words appear in a cartoon-like bubble above the avatar.
She can also click on and animate objects in the room. They'll chat facing each other. They've quickly created their own protocol. It's already different from regular text chat, it seems - more like chatting with someone in person. Maybe 3-D chat has more politeness built in.