San Francisco based teen social network Piczo looks as though they’ve called it a day with trying to make it on their own, and will be joining the Stockholm, Sweden based teen-girl dress-up site Stardoll.  Paid Content UK reports that Piczo will remain independent, however together with Stardoll, they are forming “The Stardoll Network”.  This new network will also include a third member, Paperdoll Heaven (A free title, ad supported).

While mainly photo sharing based Piczo claims over 30 million registered users, with 10 million monthly unique views, they’re still a relative ‘unknown’ in the social networking scene.  Part of this low profile stems from the sites’ user base itself – a demographic comprised mainly of 13 – 16 year olds.  In comparison, larger social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo have an average user age significantly higher.

Stardoll shares a similar story, while flying well below the ‘grown-ups’ radar, the site has been a hit with it’s not always easy to please target audience: teenage girls.  Stardoll currently reports 27 million accounts, and not only allows users to naturally dress up dolls in any way they wish, but have also been courting pop stars to create their own alter-egos.

The third member of the Stardoll Network is Paperdoll Heaven, launched last December.  The name was the original name for Stardoll itself when it launched in 2004.

What is particularly noteworthy about the newly formed Stardoll Network is that they’ve truly got a mixed bag here.  It looks as though the Network is placing one of the big three monetization modules in each child site.  Stardoll includes microtransactions, Piczo includes a ‘Piczo Plus’ option (subscription), and Paperdoll Heaven will be free via ad-support.