Fashion fans push Stardoll past 50 million users

Girls who love fashion are pushing Stardoll to new membership heights. Today, the Swedish company announced that its membership base has surpassed 50 million registered users.

Stockholm-based Stardoll created a site where members can create their own MeDoll avatars, design their own fashions, and furnish their own virtual suites. They can engage in social play and purchase virtual items for their avatars to wear. Since its launch four years ago, the user base has grown to 12.25 million unique visitors a month. The members come from 230 territories and converse in 17 languages. New members are signing up at a rate of 45,000 per day. The core audience ranges in age from 9 to 17.

The growth tells us how broad the Internet’s reach has become, since girls were not early driver’s of the web audience. Rivals include fashion-oriented virtual character sites such as Nurien to general-purpose virtual worlds such as Second Life. Investors include Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.