Comments on: Disney Targets Pre-Teens with New Social Networking Portal

By: LeavingaComment

LeavingaComment — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:40:54 +0000

Just remeber this. once a child sees Porn or anything of that magnitude for the first time… there is NO way of UNseeing it. you dont forget it. you Only WANT TO KNOW MORE. which is the whole point of disney NOT playing xxx on kids tv network. it wasnt disneys idea, it was some brainless idiot’s who didnt know how to run master control? ooookaay. folks, you cant make mistakes like that in broadcasting these days. that was the old days. anything like this is 100% intentional.

By: LeavingaComment

LeavingaComment — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:23:29 +0000

When Walt Disney puts out almost 90% witchcraft and actual occult mind control movies and television shows with the intent to have control over our minds and even some mainstream Christians defend Disney as wholesome right from the very first Fantasia film. There isn’t anything wholesome about placing subliminal messages in CHILD movies such as the words SEX in the blasphemous Lion King. We know who the REAL Lion King of Judah is. And show an actual pornography photo of a woman’s breasts admittedly by Disney in two-three frames of the cartoon movie The rescuers from 1977. And have the Preacher of the little mermaid get an erection while he’s marrying them or having the cartoon whore from Who Framed Rodger rabbit spread her legs with a very graphic 4-5 frames of lower frontal nudity like a penthouse magazine (that is after shes been a tease through out the entire movie) and have the prince in the Aladdin say all good teenagers take off your clothes. its no wonder that sex is a gigantic part of everyones mindsets these days. We’re smacked it to us without our even knowing it. being programmed like perfect little slaves that society has become. Oh, but disney wouldnt do thaaaat. Theyre nice peeeopllle. Walts head cryogenically frozen until science can catch up and unfreeze his brain so he can speak again. he’ll probably be around in 10 years or so making more movies and having more mind controll-ED slaves. some of you im sure. or worse, your kids.

Nothing wrong with that and WE SHOULD trust Disney. They really really do care! Gimme a break you dumbed down, SSRI med taking zombie drugged, fluoride drinking, over taxed for your methane flatulence and exhale slaves. You probably dont even have a clue what any of this last sentance means. that PROVES how much lower your IQ is from all that fluoride. Like the good hitlerians were. You SHOULD be blind if you can’t see the truth behind the smoke and mirrors. o p e n y o u r e y e s PPL!

But your kids deserve much better. much better!
The end.

By: shahid

shahid — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:41:14 +0000

i am

By: Shaping Youth

Shaping Youth — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:39:48 +0000

Just posted a piece warning parents about the URL “oops” potential…in an editorial commentary on Shaping Youth’s site here: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=421

By: kokorozashi

kokorozashi — Thu, 03 May 2007 22:34:27 +0000

Parents white-list the domain names their kids may visit. Relax with all this DOA babble.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:54:03 +0000

@Sahar Sarid

lol, that’s awesome

By: Fidel Guajardo

Fidel Guajardo — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:07:52 +0000

The New York Times recently did a story on other pre-teen social networks entitled: My Daughter, the Burger-Flipping Penguin at this url: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05.....mp;emc=rss

By: Cuube

Cuube — Thu, 03 May 2007 17:18:54 +0000

The UI looks terrible. The different modules look chunky and that blue color is threathening. If their target market is pre-teens, wonder what’s the average age of the creative and dev teams that put together the site?!

By: sam

sam — Thu, 03 May 2007 15:29:26 +0000

for those of you who aren’t aware of the potential size of this market.. do some basic research.

i’m no longer amazed when people start spouting off on issues that they have little knowledge of. the market for kids is huge… i repeat, huge…

a good chunk of advertising is rightly/wrongly directed towards kids (at least here in the us). part of this is a direct correlation to the fact that parents want to be friends to their kids, as opposed to dealing with the conflicts that arise when you raise kids. the result is that parents give in to kids wants/desires…

hell, i know parents who’ve given their 10 year old, cell phones/playstations/access to the computer (unmonitored)/private school/etc…

marketers/advertisers know/recognize this, and play to these feelings..

on another point, check out http://www.clubpenguin.com. the site is essentially a play on the virtual world approach, but it’s geared towards kids. the really interesting approach, is that kids spend more time (per visit) on the site, than adults do on myspace/facebook…

this ultimately translates into $$$ for the operator of the site…

i’m not worried about predators on disney.. the early entrants into this area are going to make bank if they implement correctly!!

peace

By: pallet jack

pallet jack — Thu, 03 May 2007 15:27:22 +0000

I’m going to get in on a positive - note

- Its better than myspace for the pre-teens.
- some kids are going to join a network; atleast this is now an option.

- and again atleast the advertisments; are targeted for little kids, not a “fart button” or “Hot singles in yoru area”

- think about the positives, and not a reason to start hating anything posted on TC

By: 42

42 — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:42:29 +0000

Oh hey, it’s the prototype for the _Idiocracy_ portal. Get em started young.

By: David Mackey

David Mackey — Thu, 03 May 2007 14:25:04 +0000

Wow. Disney is brave to take on the legal hurdles of this field. What happens after the first child molester is discovered on Disney’s new network?

By: Philip Stanley

Philip Stanley — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:44:58 +0000

Comcast was responsible for the porn snafu not Disney. Appears that you didn’t follow the link. I expect the information to be credible at TechCrunch, Please correct your reference!

By: Minic Rivera

Minic Rivera — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:18:43 +0000

Good thing my kids were in school when that porn was exposed in Disney Channel in Comcast the other day. Comcast did admit though that it was their mistake and not Disney.

By: Federico Campo Piombi

Federico Campo Piombi — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:11:59 +0000

Social networking sites for pre-teens tends to work out great, since all of them are a lot into chat and messagging, and want to make “friends” all over the web.
I’m a developer and worked for the site http://www.fanta.com.ar which is a social networking for kids (originally) from 14 to 17.. but the site also became popular among 12-14 ages aswell.
Even with the (sometimes) slow download rates, and some communication issues, the number of members is ever-growing.
Take in account that the site is not for US market (so age interests might vary)

By: Motown

Motown — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:21:30 +0000

The dumbing down of America starts earlier and earlier it seems. Constant Disney product pimping…ughh.

Perhaps there is a market for well-monitored preteen social networking, I just wish it came from elsewhere. As someone mentioned, PBSKIDS and LEGO.com are very nice though.

By: Yakov

Yakov — Thu, 03 May 2007 09:30:05 +0000

I can’t check it because its homepage returns a message that is not available to guests from outside the U.S. I agree that a lot of videos or flash ads makes the site cluttered. That’s pointed out by our users who prefer our kids site vs the others because of no flash ads and video.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 03 May 2007 07:32:19 +0000

I agree with others who say it’s a poor name. My first instinct with the name was “it sounds porn-ish.” Are pre-teens really into “extreme” things anyway? Wouldn’t “Disney’s Playland,” or something of that nature, be a better choice?

Anyway, I just wanted to say that the design, while pretty, looks like a cluttered, confusing mess. I wonder how much research went into this project.

By: Kewtr

Kewtr — Thu, 03 May 2007 07:12:31 +0000

Hey, just to clarify, the page is pretty cool really. I think it’s a cool idea. But there are few examples of more unfortunate namings out there.

And for the record, it is being marketed as ‘xtreme’. “Experience the all new Disney Xtreme Digital”. That is specifically why I made the DOA comment.

I mean aside from the domain issues noted above, just pretend ‘xtreme digital’ becomes what this service is known as, even to a few kids. Just search on that, and guess if you’ll be happy if your kid clicks on the first result. Disney’s down number 3 or so, because they are marketing as ‘xtreme digital’ just like the adult Shockwave site of the same name.

That’s an absolute ton of money down the drain already. There’s no way around this one, it needs cancelled or renamed. Someone does need firing.

By: Paul Montgomery

Paul Montgomery — Thu, 03 May 2007 07:03:47 +0000

I lub duncanriley longtime.

By: Sahar Sarid

Sahar Sarid — Thu, 03 May 2007 06:11:36 +0000

““xtreme” is just marketing slang. It’s not like we’ll be advertising “Xtreme Digital dot com!” or anything. Kids will find it on the Disney sites (or parents will) and bookmark it.”

Jimmy,
People, including kids, type brands plus extension into the brwoser bar. The brand here is “Xtreme Digital” and they will type both XtremeDigital.com and ExtremeDigital.com into the browser bar, wether Disney promotes the correct domain or not.
This is wrong and need to be changed ASAP. I hope the media will be all over it soon, not for the sake of me being right about it, but for the sake of youngsters worldwide.

By: Jay (living in First Life)

Jay (living in First Life) — Thu, 03 May 2007 06:11:25 +0000

This is DOA. Once you go to the site it makes two key mistakes:

1. It says BETA - 11 year olds have no clue what BETA means. Did they do any usability studies at all?

2. There is a demo video - my attention span is about 1.2 seconds. An 11 year old’s attention span is even shorter. No one wants to wait to get into it. Let the video be on the side or an optional pop-up but don’t make it required.

This brings up the really big question - when can we reasonably expect C-SPAN to launch it’s social network for high school debate geeks? I can imagine a play on local search based on a mashup of Google Maps (to see where your favorite politician is), Twitter (so your favorite politician can microblog and tell you what they ate for lunch), Loopt (because we all know Paul Graham has to be involved somehow), and Friendster (because everyone loves a dying social network). It will be quite brilliant and of course tie in lifecasting from C-SPAN where you can watch Condi Rice take her hat cam all over Afghanistan as she meets with warlords and tells them about how Web 2.0 mashups are the next big thing in spreading American values worldwide.

By: Hahah Duncan Riley tops over Mike's blog

Hahah Duncan Riley tops over Mike's blog — Thu, 03 May 2007 05:15:34 +0000

Hey mike… your samurai warrior is weak…

Duncan got handful skills. I’m taking your old idol and put new journalist idol.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Thu, 03 May 2007 04:59:28 +0000

Again, a disclaimer… I don’t represent Disney at all… just providing a little insight. And I misspelled “targeted”.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Thu, 03 May 2007 04:58:20 +0000

I can’t speak for Disney, but I am a Disney web developer. No, I didn’t work on (or even know of) this site (I work for a different area of Disney Internet Group). I can say, though, that I think it’s a great idea. Parents who want their kids to be able to add their friends and get involved with technology at a young age will cherish this web site. At Disney, we’re very aware that our brand is targetted towards children.

If you take a look at Virtual Magic Kingdom, for example, we actually have a dictionary in place of words that kids are *allowed* to say. We take the white-list approach. It’s a bit more difficult to communicate, and of course kids find creative ways around the filter, but all in all it’s a decent, albeit bottled, experience.

“xtreme” is just marketing slang. It’s not like we’ll be advertising “Xtreme Digital dot com!” or anything. Kids will find it on the Disney sites (or parents will) and bookmark it.

And I very very seriously doubt DOA… there’s a very large market for this if you think about it. There are parents out there who watch what their kids do.