Gelert, Meet Snoop Dogg

MTV Networks said on Monday that it bought NeoPets, the 25 million-member online community of young people obsessed with fictional digital pets. NeoPets generates five billion pageviews per month and is one of the stickiest sites around, consistently in the top ten sites for time spent per visit. The site started in 2000, in the midst of the bursting internet bubble and has grown pretty much unaided by media marketing.

The site creates a virtual world (a Neopia) featuring its own newspaper, bank accounts to stash interest-bearing "Neopoints" and innumerable promotions, contests and other stuff to make the site more sticky.

MTV will pay the owners of privately-held NeoPets a gajillion Neopoints and promise to feed the venture very regularly . There was also an undisclosed package of U.S. Treasury cash involved.