The Walt Disney Internet Group positions its new and improved Family.com site, now in beta format, as a one-stop shop for parents looking for community, tips, activities, and social networking.
The site will also incorporate consumer-generated features for the first time, including blogs and opportunities to post comments on editorial content.
Officially announced on
Tuesday, the site cuts a wide swath--offering content of interest to families on everything from education, food, and parenting tips to advice on traveling with children, entertainment and shopping.
The site offers articles from parenting experts, an improved search function, and a list of family/community sites that extends outside the empire of Disney-owned sites.
Among the site's other
features:
The "Disney Family 1,000," a set of sites rated by registered site users as their most recommended online resources for parents.A Family Tool Box of time-saving search
tools for things like recipes, family travel, coupons and entertainment.ParentPedia, a family wiki of parenting topics that combines expert advice with everyday parents' advice. Disney
also plans to create online groups formed around specific topics like bullying or birthdays. Parents will eventually be able to create private groups with other parents that can be accessed by a
password.
WDIG considers the overhauled Family.com an extension of the Disney brand on the Web.
Yet Josh Bernoff, principal analyst, Forrester Research, cautions that's not the best way to
market it: "Disney is very good at promoting Disney and if you go to Disney.com, that's what it's all about. But you can't have a site that does nothing but promote Disney properties."
That
aside, Bernoff is impressed by what he sees taking shape at Family.com: "Family.com is an attempt to open up--it won't favor Disney Entertainment. It will link to all kinds of family sites on the Web,
and it'll include user-generated comments which are going to be pretty random."
But Disney will "get fried if it doesn't do this right," Bernoff added. "They have said they'll filter things for
the usual problems--indecent content, vacuous content, off-topic content--that's what everybody does. What happens when someone writes, 'I think Disney content contributes to the over-dependence on
media among children?' A regular parenting site should put that up. I want to see if they have the guts to do that."
Every article on the site will allow comments, along with the ParentPedia, and
blogs: "When you allow comments, people say whatever's on their minds," Bernoff said. "Just managing the user-generated aspects of it will be challenging." Still, Bernoff and his partner Forrester
analyst Charlene Li are bullish on the site and are encouraging advertisers to take a look.
One thing the revamped site doesn't offer in beta is video.
"It was a matter of prioritization,"
said Emily Smith, vice president in charge of Disney Family.com development. Smith said the 18-month roadmap for the site includes the gradual incorporation of video, and that existing Disney sites
FamilyFun.com and Wondertime.com already have video and are developing more Web video series.
"Today, I would say that we are for sure going to be offering best-in-class video partner content as
well as our own in the months to come," Smith said, with respect to Family.com.
This summer, Smith said, Disney will add three features to the ParentPedia including expert definitions, a
community area on the wiki with moderated comments, and first-person narratives/stories about parenting challenges. In addition, a new visual interface to accompany the Family 1,000 list will enable
parents to sort through sites and engage in conversations around each site.
"We are expecting that there will be some mischief-makers," Smith said, referring to the moderators. "I hope I don't
sound too simplistic by saying this, but I view our job in community moderation like manager of a corner coffee shop. If somebody decides to stand up and scream obscenities, they should be asked to
leave, and possibly not be asked back."
In revamping Family.com, Disney is clearly banking on Web 2.0 features to foster a vibrant and robust community that will attract not merely eyeballs, but
engagement. "In order for us to stay relevant to this audience, these are the kinds of experiences that parents are looking for," Smith added.
"It has the chance to be very successful," Bernoff
concluded. "This site will not only draw traffic, it will generate engagement. Why shouldn't there be sponsorships there? A kids' health section sponsored by J&J."
The opportunity is vast: There
are 32 million moms online, according to eMarketer's data, and they're cruising big and small sites like MothersClick, Maya's Mom, and ClubMom.
"Disney is hitting all the Web 2.0 hot buttons
with this ambitious site," said Debbie Williamson, senior analyst, eMarketer, in an e-mail.
"Family 2.0 brings community and parent-to-parent connections to the forefront. Instead of being a tab
on the navigation menu, community runs seamlessly throughout the site," the analyst said. "I also like the idea of the Disney Family 1,000 ... The fact that site members can rate and review the sites
in the Family 1,000 gives additional credibility, because moms are especially tuned in to the recommendations of other moms."