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From...

Nancy Drew cracks the Web

September 4, 1998
Web posted at: 1:50 PM EDT

by Lessley Anderson

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(IDG) -- The most popular girl sleuth in history went online Wednesday at http://www.NancyDrew.com. The latest offering from mystery-site creators Newfront Productions, NancyDrew.com targets not only girls who read the popular series today, but women who grew up loving Nancy since her inception in 1930.

Nancy, licensed from Simon & Schuster and made over for cyberspace with a shorter haircut and sportier clothes, will appear in a new mystery each month, doled out in bite-sized weekly installments. The first mystery, called Nancy Drew's Ride to Terror, places Nancy and sidekick Bess on amusement-park rides trying to track down their misplaced buddy George. Shockwave-enhanced games playing upon the detective theme, Nancy history and trivia, a discussion group, and links to buy Nancy Drew books, make up the rest of the site.

San Francisco-based Newfront Productions has already scored with mystery fans by building a network of fan sites at MysteryNet.com, "The Online Mystery Network." With 300,000 registered members, MysteryNet has tapped into a growing pool of wired mystery junkies, offering weekly "mini-mysteries" users can solve themselves at TheCase.com, historical info on mystery writers from Poe to Hammett, and a kids section complete with lesson plans for teachers based on Ð you got it Ð mysteries.

Steve Schaffer, president of Newfront, points out that NancyDrew.com already has a built-in fan base: MysteryNet's community section shows hundreds of posts in the Nancy Drew discussion group, on such disparate aspects as favorite plots, vintage book collecting and psychoanalysis of Nancy's "Type A" personality. And outside of MysteryNet, Nancy has generations of fans who Schaffer hopes will visit the site - and lure potential advertisers.

"Nancy Drew is a pop-cultural icon waiting to be exposed to another generation online," Schaffer said. "This site is going to open the floodgates."

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