Walt Disney's Internet arm is about to launch a UK portal aimed at teenagers and showcasing its games, films, music and social networking assets. The Disney.co.uk Web site will launch on next week and follows the launch of the concept in the United States earlier this year. The Disney site, like its U.S. sister will have at its heart a feature called Disney Extreme Digital, aimed at children that allows them to customize multi-media content simultaneously while watching and sharing videos, messages, music and games.
The site has parental protection and prompts children to use Disney-proposed online chat phrases that are polite. The UK Web site will include what Disney describes as "snack-size" movie and television clips, podcasts and locally produced content alongside archived and new material.
Disney will have a mix of business models based on advertising, sponsorship ,subscriptions and transaction-based services and will have online shopping for their products.
Disney has opted not to aggregate with other s content and focus on leveraging their own brand and content. One only needs to look at the success of the Disney parks, films and width of their content to see that they have the brand pull to succeed where many others will fail to do so by themselves.
