At their core, branded social networks are a marketing ploy by firms to keep you interested in their products. So, be aware that if you join one you will need to deal with some annoying advertisements. But if you want to join another community of people with similar interests, start with some of these services.
Branded social networks
Disney Disney's social-networking efforts provide a unique experience by appealing more to children than adults.
After you sign up for the social network, you'll be given the opportunity to create your own "page." There, you can add videos, audio, games, widgets, and a variety of other elements to make your page your own. Think of it as a custom home page. As you might expect, most of the elements you can add to your page are Disney-branded. So, you can have a "101 Dalmatians" background or play a "Pirates of the Caribbean" game. Once complete, you can check out other users' pages, chat with friends, or join groups. It's a powerful service and it's well-designed.
Disney lets you do a lot with your page.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)eBay Neighborhoods eBay Neighborhoods is a collection of groups of eBay users who communicate, review products, upload content, or just discuss the topics of their choice.
After signing up for eBay, you can easily join one of the company's neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods range in size from a few members to thousands of members that center on topics ranging from coffee to sports. The members in each group engage in discussions on those subjects. They can also review products and post blog entries. Some of the bigger neighborhoods have a lot of activity, while others have little activity. Either way, eBay Neighborhoods isn't a bad place to communicate with people who share your interests.
eBay Neighborhoods have some groups worth joining.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
Disney's ABC Enterprises announced Thursday that it has entered into online-video joint venture Hulu, currently a partnership between NBC Universal, News Corp., and investor Providence Equity Partners.
This means that TV shows from Disney-owned channels like ABC, SoapNet, and ABC Family will be coming to Hulu. Among them are "Lost," "Grey's Anatomy," "Ugly Betty," and "Scrubs." There will also be Disney movies available on the ad-supported streaming video site, but a press release did not name any of them. Content will be available "soon," the press release explained.
Reports started to surface about a month ago that Disney was in talks to join Hulu.
Robert Iger, president and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, will take a seat on Hulu's board of directors, along with Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, and Kevin Mayer, executive vice president of corporate strategy, business development, and technology at Disney.
ABC already streams a significant amount of television content on ABC.com, and Disney-owned television and video content was some of the first to make an appearance in the iTunes Store's video download section.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is Disney's single biggest shareholder, having sold animation studio Pixar to the company in 2006.
This post was expanded at 8:15 a.m. PT.
Disney Online announced on Wednesday that it has acquired "a number" of assets from family site Kaboose.
According to the company, Kaboose assets were acquired for $18 million. Kaboose sites, including BabyZone and AmazingMoms, will become part of Disney's existing family properties. The deal will be completed once the acquisition attains shareholder approval.
FileLater, an authorized IRS e-file provider, announced on Wednesday that it is now the only online service to provide both businesses and consumers the opportunity to file a tax extension before the April 15 deadline. The company said it facilitated the filing of more extensions in March 2009 than it did in all of 2008. It has also enjoyed "five times the traffic" leading up to April 15. FileLater charges $39.95 for business tax extensions and $17.95 for personal income tax extensions.
Online note-taking service Evernote released an updated version of its application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Dubbed version 2.0, the app now includes landscape view and the option to see thumbnail images of saved content (a la Apple's Coverflow). But more importantly, the free app now includes an integrated browser, which lets users access links within their notes without firing up the Safari browser. The free update is now available in the Apple App Store.
Bicyclist Lance Armstrong's Livestrong site, which provides health, fitness, and lifestyle-related content, on Wednesday announced that its expanding its service to the BlackBerry.
Dubbed Calorie Tracker, Livestrong's app will allow users to input exactly what they're eating throughout the day to determine how many calories they've consumed. Calorie Tracker will be able to locate more than 525,000 food items and 2,000 fitness activities. Users can see how many calories they're consuming and how many they're burning off.
The app even shows information on fat, carbohydrate, and protein intake. It will be preinstalled in the BlackBerry application carousel on all devices released after April 1. It should be noted that Calorie Tracker is currently available in the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch owners.
(Credit:
Disney-Pixar)
Disney is fighting a piracy war over its acclaimed film Wall-E against a company that its venture capital arm invested in, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The infringing company, 56.com, a Chinese video sharing site that's similar to YouTube, hosted several full-length bootlegs of Wall-E that were freely available on the company's site. The bootlegs were added by users of the site months ago, but only recently have they been fully removed from its pages.
Piracy in China is nothing new, but the fact that 56.com featured Disney movies on its site is ironic, considering Disney's venture capital division, Steamboat Ventures, invested in the video sharing company back in 2006. Although the exact amount is unknown, the Journal claims the investment is substantial, but less than $30 million.
John Ball, founder and managing director of Steamboat, told the Journal that his company was aware that pirated content was commonplace on the site when it made its investment in 56.com, but he was confident that the video service would remove illegal material quickly and "help the legitimate evolution of digital content online."
A quick search of 56.com yielded no results for "Wall-E" on Friday, but it wasn't difficult to find copies of other prominent films in their entirety. But now that Disney has been affected by 56.com, it will be interesting to see if any more of the company's films crop up on the popular Chinese site.
Fandango, the movie-ticketing company owned by Comcast since 2007, announced on Monday that it has acquired Movies.com, a movie news and reviews aggregator. Movies.com had previously been owned by Disney's Walt Disney Internet Group.
Financial details were not disclosed.
The aim of the acquisition is to provide a one-stop movie hub for the Web, executives said.
"We are pleased to expand our rich-entertainment reach through this strategic addition of Movies.com," Chuck Davis, CEO of Fandango, said in a statement. The ticketing site currently sells admission to 15,000 theaters in the United States. "We'll be able to leverage our combined assets to offer millions of new moviegoers the best movie-related information available on the Web."
I guess this is what Disney would consider edgy: the company has reportedly acquired Ideal Bite, a "sassy" eco-focused e-mail newsletter that explicitly states it's "not for readers under age 18." The price was about $15 million, PaidContent reported. That's a lot smaller than Club Penguin, which Disney acquired for $350 million last year.
Ideal Bite is small even as far as e-mail lists go--it's no DailyCandy--but its demographic was likely of interest to a buyer like Disney. The site's median household income is $82,000, press materials state; the median age is 35; and the target demographic is the sort that "drinks organic wine after yoga." In other words, yuppie moms.
And "green" media is unsurprisingly a hot niche. Last year, Discovery Communications acquired the blog TreeHugger to accompany its Planet Green cable network, and the TreeHugger-Discovery partnership was recently selected to power the new eco-news division at the Huffington Post.
When we last heard from Ideal Bite, it was throwing a chic launch party in New York last year following an investment by the Pilot Group, the firm headed by MTV co-founder and former AOL exec Bob Pittman. The celebration featured a mechanical bull and dancers clad entirely in leaves, which I expect won't be featured in any kind of Disney-bought-us gala.
Then again, Disney is responsible for Desperate Housewives.
Disney has begun showing full-length movies online, beginning with Finding Nemo, the studio said Tuesday.
It's the first time Disney has done so, and it's notable as such, but don't confuse the move with a full-on YouTubization of the company. Each movie will only be available for a few days after they air on ABC's Saturday-night TV show Wonderful World of Disney. Finding Nemo, for example, can be watched online through June 13, Disney said.
Disney.com now streams Finding Nemo.
(Credit: Disney.com)It's free, but don't expect a full-immersion cinema experience.
The movies are available through a "watch now" link on the upper-right side of the Disney.com Web site. I had to sit through an ad for Cocoa Pebbles cereal, then an equally high-fructose introductory Disney promotional video. And the window showing the movie is surrounded by an encrustation of further garish ads.
But ads clearly pay some of the bills here, and streaming video takes a lot of bandwidth and server horsepower, so I can't complain too much. (Especially since my own paycheck comes from ad revenue.)
I didn't see much in the way of Snow White-era classics on the schedule, but presumably this is just for openers:
• Monsters Inc. airs on ABC June 14 and is available online June 16-20.
• Haunted Mansion airs on TV June 28 and online June 30-July 4.
• Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is on TV July 5 and online July 7-11.
• Princess Diaries 2 is on TV July 12 and online July 14-18.
• Freaky Friday is on TV July 19 and online July 21-25.
• Peter Pan is on TV August 2 and online August 4-8.
Disney also is showing Camp Rock online on June 23.
Too cheap to take your kids on a vacation to Orlando to see Disney World? Now you can just load up Google Earth instead.
This morning, users of the software mapping tool will find a brand new layer that features an experience Bruce Polderman, Google Earth's product manager, says "pushed the user experience of both 3D models and KML to new heights." The layer has the entire theme park modeled in 3D, right down to some of the tiniest details like trees, food carts, and even park maps the size of a stop sign.
Not everything in the park is modeled in 3D, but according to Polderman there are well over 5,000 objects that have made their way in there. Not featured in 3D are the spanning parking lots, which are actually larger than the entire park when viewed from above.
Also included is a wash of data for each attraction. To find out more about any part of the park, there's a little purple Mickey Mouse head you can click on that will give you a written description of the ride, along with photos and, in some cases, even videos. Some descriptions are a little more kid-oriented, with music and special effects like Cinderella Castle, which sparkles when you roll your mouse over it. There are also links on each ride to help you book a vacation, or jump you to a special page in Google Earth's built-in Web browser.
To see the new layer in 3D you'll need the latest version of Google Earth. I'm expecting this to make its way over to Google Maps in a few weeks with that new browser plug-in.
Explore all the nooks and crannies of Disney World with Google Earth's new layer--right down to the rides.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Updated 12:30 p.m. PT
A coalition of major media and technology companies that notably does not include Google appears to be getting serious about copyright on the Internet.
A who's who of media companies--CBS, News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal, Viacom, and Disney--as well as Microsoft and the News Corp.-owned MySpace, along with video-sharing sites Dailymotion and Veoh Networks released a set of guidelines Thursday designed to halt online piracy.
Notably absent from the list is Google, which unveiled filtering technology for its YouTube video-sharing site on Monday. Sources familiar with the coalition plan say Google was involved in the talks at one point, but backed out shortly before making its own announcement. Disney and Microsoft initiated the effort, multiple sources said.
"Initially Disney reached out directly to us," Veoh Networks CEO Steve Mitgang said in an interview with CNET News.com.
In response to questions, Google released a statement from YouTube Engineering Director Jeremy Doig: "We appreciate ideas from the various media companies on effective content identification technologies. We're glad that they recognize the need to cooperate on these issues, and we'll keep working with them to refine our industry-leading tools."
A YouTube spokesman who asked not to be named says Google had talked to Disney about the guidelines but Google and YouTube executives decided not to join the alliance because they were worried that creating "industry-wide mandates" would stifle innovation.
A source close to the deal hinted that the longstanding billion-dollar lawsuit between Viacom and Google over copyrighted content on YouTube may have played a role in Google's decision to back out, citing the possibility that it could have affected how the litigation would unfold. And another source familiar with the alliance finds fault with the fact that Google's new filtering system doesn't actually block infringing content from being posted, but supposedly removes it from the site within minutes. The media group's guidelines call for "blocking infringing uploads before they are made available to the public.
"It's unprecedented that these disparate companies have come together," the source says. "It's a real loss that Google isn't a part of this."
The companies expect to implement the guidelines before the end of the year, another source at one of the companies says. It hasn't been made clear whether this will mean we'll be seeing more announcements and partnerships--or more specifically, whether the two video-sharing platforms involved in the alliance, Veoh and DailyMotion, will become more attractive business partners for the major media and technology companies involved.
"Our goal is to be a vital partner for premium independent and individual producers. We're already a partner to CBS," Veoh's Mitgang said, referring to the company's new online video-sharing network. "We are actively working with everybody on the list regarding this."
Representatives from multiple companies involved in the initiative emphasized that it's not a closed partnership and that other corporations may be introduced into it as well--provided they are willing to adhere to and support the guidelines.
"The principles acknowledge a collective respect for protecting copyrights and recognize that filtering technologies must be effective and are only a part of what is necessary to achieve this goal," a joint news release said.
The guidelines also call for companies to: balance the legitimate "fair use" rights for using copyrighted material, promptly address claims that content was blocked in error, and upgrade technology "when commercially reasonable."
Protecting fair use--which allows people to post excerpts of copyright content and use content for educational purposes and for parody--is important, says Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, which monitors copyright issues online.
Boehm criticized Google for not joining the effort. "Google is continuing to play hard ball," he says. "They are going to use their market share and economic power to just hold off any kind of reform or compromise."
Several sources say plans have been made for representatives from some members of the new alliance--though it's not yet clear which companies--to head to Washington, D.C. soon to meet with members of Congress on the matter. Rather than move to encourage more legislation, it's to educate lawmakers on the issues and show them that occasionally-sparring media and technology companies can handle this on their own.
A full list of the principles involved in this new set of guidelines, which emphasize high-tech filtering, quick removal of pirated content, and promotion of infringement-free digital content, are publicly available at the new site UGCPrinciples.com.
The news was originally reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier on Thursday.
With contributions from CNET News.com's Elinor Mills.
Pirates getting in the way of business? Let's form Voltron.
(Credit: TV Tokyo)The announcement has been made--read CNET News.com's full coverage here.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that an impressive cast of major media and technology companies plans to announce a high-profile list of joint guidelines for preserving copyright and fighting piracy online. Sources told The Journal that the companies involved include media moguls CBS Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox (and its MySpace social network), Viacom, and Disney, as well as tech icon Microsoft and French video-sharing site DailyMotion.
It's unclear whether these are the only parties involved in the deal. Inquiries to several of the companies allegedly involved in the agreement went unanswered.
The most notable party absent from the group is Google, according to The Journal's Kevin Delaney. Apparently, the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech titan had been in talks about joining but did not go through with it. Google is the parent company of YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing site that had come under fire from media companies for making it easy to share copyrighted content.
Google recently announced an antipiracy technology initiative for YouTube.
