Disney slowly courts idea of UGC and their properties

Disney walks line with digital kids, parents

Posted by
Stefanie Olsen

SAN JOSE, Calif.–Can a legacy company known for polished storytelling stay relevant to a generation of kids growing used to telling their own stories?

That’s the tough question for Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director of Disney Online, which runs Disney.com and the newly acquired virtual world Club Penguin. Yanover spoke here Wednesday at the Virtual Worlds conference and admitted that growing Disney’s Internet properties is a work in progress. After all, one of the world’s most popular brands for children ended up buying newcomer virtual world Club Penguin for $350 million this summer.

“It’s a new space for us to figure out,” Yanover said.

On the Internet, the company is focused on three things: fun, safety and integrity, Yanover said. That means that Disney’s sites must be engaging and safe for kids, but they also must hold to an established story line consistent with the company’s brand and delivering on parents’ expectations. For example, Yanover joked that he’d have a hard time putting up a digital billboard in Disney’s upcoming Pirates of the Carribean virtual world.

That’s why Disney Online veers toward structured environments built around a story or game, and the company will continue on that path, he said. But down the road it plans to explore offerings that give kids more control over their experience. It’s already dabbled in that area. In January, Disney Online allowed kids to create their own fairy, and run a Web site around the animation. Three million kids participated.

Still, a parent in the audience asked that Disney offer tools to kid members of Club Penguin so that they could build things in the virtual world. Yanover said he liked the idea, but hinted later that it might take some time to bring in that functionality.

“We’re a polished content company. But we’re moving down the spectrum of participation and user-created additions,” he said.

Disney walks line with digital kids, parents | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Unlike many who are happy to tackle the empowerment & possibility of UGC (User Generated Content) with the audience and their brands– the biggest pony in the stable has opted to slow things down a bit.

Disney - a lockbox in more ways than one - sits quite nicely on the pinacle point of its pyramid of safety & parental approval. Hey, I don’t have a problem with that. It shows that they KNOW what they are! In the past they were uber excited and pumped full of energy to join the race in the online media world– creating environments for user control. DXD, for example– was edgy & interesting, allowing a more personalized feel for the user’s home hub…. kinda like the interior of the locker at school. Wanna smear Zac Effron or Corbin Bleu all over your DXD page? Go for it. I’m not sure how successful it was (I get mixed reviews from the peeps I often chat with), and we have hopefully all been warned about the DXD searching issues (watch out for the porn people– unforch, googling DXD doesn’t bring up the Disney every time).

Disney has the opportunity to “sit pretty” and continue exploring their properties their own way– making the best digital atmospheres as possible, while the rest of us error and perfect the ways of UGC & it’s place within media.

They tried UGC with the whole “High School Musical” UGC voting thing: “What does Corbin Bleu’s shirt say?” It turned out less cool and more “one in a billion voted for this saying”, which is nice in “theory” but kinda misses the whole audience gets a piece of the fame element that a lot of people enjoy within generating content– affecting their entertainment. So, in my opinion, after reading this comment by Disney– I agree, I much rather them sit pretty, exploring ways for us to play with their properties their way (Fairies), safely & justly, instead of getting the whole thing wrong (or lame) from the start.

Agree? Disagree? Agree to disagree?

Blogged with Flock

Kindersay, so you don’t have to.

Dear Parents: Save Some Money, Use Kindersay.

Michael Arrington

One thing that amazes me when I visit friends who have young children is the stunning amount of cash they lay out on educational toys and videos. Parents will pay literally anything if they think their kids will learn something and get a head start over the competition. Companies take advantage of that need people have to be perfect parents and sell them every conceivable type of educational toy and video, at ridiculous prices.But you can stop the vicious cycle of spending with…the Internet. Once your child has mastered Elmo’s Potty Time
(let me know how it ends if you watch it all the way through, I stopped
at Earl the fruit guy because he quite frankly creeped me out), give Kindersay
a whirl. It shows pictures of things or letters and an actress
(Christine Ghawi, who stars as Céline Dion in the CBC Canadian show
Céline) says the words. It’s free and has no advertising. If you want
to add in your own family pictures to customize the show, they charge
$6/month.

The next time you’re too busy to actually spend time with your kid,
just plop them down in front of the computer, fire up Kindersay and let
them do their thing. They’ll grow up to be smart, considerate, well
adjusted kids. I’m sure of it.

Dear Parents: Save Some Money, Use Kindersay.

Kindersay… hmm… Design = beautifully simplistic, idea = nice, narrator = intriguing (I found myself watching her say “pencils” with complete awe– like the awe I had when I stared at Billy Ray Cyrus’s hair on Dancing with the Stars last season… intriguing, fascinating, addicting, confusing…).

It’s the last part of Michael’s review that I am siding with the most (the sarcasm at least)– why are we sooo dependent on others to educate our children? Spending time with kids, showing them the world, experiencing everything through their young eyes, marveling at the details of life we tend to over look– that’s what a pleasure only a parent gets!!

Plopping your baby in front of a computer for some strange (yet fascinating) woman to say “paint”? What a cop out.

Why do people keep limiting the bonding between themselves and their children? And then to use the term “education” to make it “all right”? Tch. Come on.

It’s great that Kindersay created a free program for parents who clearly can’t take the time to lift up a book and say “book” to their child. It just makes me sad that such a tool might be needed.

HOWEVER– for children learning other languages? This ain’t so bad. If this stuff was in Scottish Gaelic, I’d be ALL over it. Seriously.

Blogged with Flock

Parents Proudly Baffled By the Wonder Of Their College Kids Online

You Virtually Had to Be There

By Michelle Slatalla

Published: October 11, 2007
EVER since she went off to college I’ve come to think of my daughter as Virtual Zoe. In many ways, there’s not that much difference between my glimpses of her now and the brief physical sightings in the years after she earned her driver’s license. But these days, I never know where she will turn up. It could be in the form of an e-mail message — “Check out this sweet car I saw for sale on Craigslist” — or when I’m trying to work and an instant message pops up: Oh, come on, it’s sooooo cheappppp (for a car). Or she might
write a blog post about her most recent purchase, a long-handled “claw” that extends her arm reach by nearly three feet so she can grab her phone without getting off her bed or (if later than noon) the
common-room couch.

She still exhibits the same sense of humor, the same late-night hours and presumably the same baggy gray sweat pants.

Or does she? It’s the last part — wondering about what I can’t see — that has been the hardest for me since she went away. I try to ignore the longing, but sometimes it sneaks up when I’m doing the most ordinary thing like folding laundry. I begin to wonder: Is that all I get? I put 18 years of hard work into this person, and now she disappears?

As her mother, I needed to lay eyes on her. It was still a long time until Thanksgiving break. Last week I asked her in an e-mail message, “Can we video chat tonight?”

It was a big step, because I’ve always thought of video chats as something enjoyed mainly
by connoisseurs of pornography and my husband (not to my knowledge a connoisseur of pornography). More than a decade ago, he brought home a program called CU-SeeMe, and we crowded around his Powerbook as if it were the first color television in town, transmitting herky-jerky images.

(…continue reading! It’s a great piece from a parent to modern-teen perspective! Loads of “look what kids can do” gems about the web & connecting families & independence & viral-support… click below for rest of article)

You Virtually Had to Be There - New York Times

I loved this. Chalk full fo sweet sentiments and interesting perspectives as the adult/parent’s world grows based on need & info from their college bound child.

Blogged with Flock