Nickelodeon is paying attention to its demographic. Not only do the kids these days enjoy the cartoons, they also enjoy the online experience. So, the network has significantly built upon its website by adding games, videos and chat capability. It's what the bigwigs are calling "a virtual community for kids."

Nick launched its new website today, Nicktropolis.com. There will be more than 300 hours of videos--including full episodes of some Nick shows--and more than 350 online games. It also has a Second Life sort-of spin to it. Kids can create a user name and build their own room. When they play the games, they rack up points that they can use to buy stuff for their rooms.

The "chat rooms", by the way are being called Nick Safe Chat. Kids have to get parental permission to use the chat rooms and then they can only communicate with other users via a pre-approved Nicktropolis Dictionary. You can bet that will be heavily monitored so no one ends up on Dateline.