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CES Preview: Disney Social Network for Kids

I had hoped to attend the Computer Electronics Show next week (if only to participate in the PodTech Bloghaus, a project that I was fortunate enough to help broker in my last weeks at Eastwick), but I've been pulled away on a client project, and I will need to watch and listen from afar. I am really curious to hear the reception to Disney's social network for kids, which is expected to launch at the show, according to a recent article in Media Post. Author Gavin O'Malley looks at the many challenges Disney will face in creating a "MySpace" for kids. But he also notes that Disney is already doing well with kids online.

One successful push by Disney has been its video-streaming site, Disneychannel.com. From "Hannah Montana" to "High School Musical," visitors to the site streamed over 53 million programs from June to November.

I'm not comfortable with the idea of a MySpace for kiddies, but I am betting Disney has the intelligence and the experience to pull this off.

Social Commerce

From the InfoSpaces blog: a great post about social shopping. Author Emanuele Quintarelli notes that the shopping commerce generated on social networking sites could dwarf the advertising spend:

Word-of-mouth-marketing could be an incredibly powerful trust factor on these platforms completely disrupting their current revenue models. While advertising on social-networking sites is now about $350 million a year, revenue from sales could amount to billions of dollars, complementing or overtaking ad revenues (from USA Today).

See also, Tom Hayes: "The Coming Battle for Alpha Consumers will be Intense."