Type of site | Entertainment |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | The Walt Disney Company |
URL | www |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | N/A |
Launched | February 12, 1996 |
Current status | Active |
disney.com is a website operated by Disney Digital Network, a division of The Walt Disney Company, that promotes various Disney properties such as films, television shows, and theme park resorts, and offers entertainment content intended for children and families.
For years, disney.com has been a very popular website: a survey back in April 1998 revealed that Disney.com had over 10% more unique visitors than ABCNews.com, and the combined Disney/Infoseek websites were second in web traffic to leader Yahoo! that month. [1]
The current portal is Disney's second effort at a web portal, the first being ended with the loss of go.com.
On September 21, 2011, the content from disney.com was launched as a free channel available through the Roku streaming player. It is the first player so far to allow viewing through a television. [2]
disney.com was first registered on March 21, 1990. [3] On February 12, 1996, a ten-day preview of disney.com is launched through America Online and Netscape. [4]
In January 2007, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced a major overhaul of Disney.com at the Consumer Electronics Show. The announced changes put a heavy emphasis on an integrated video player. Further changes were also announced to sort content based on visitor demographics and the addition of social networking features that would be monitored for appropriate content. [5]
The newly redesigned website was unveiled in February 2007. It included a new service called Disney Xtreme Digital (Disney XD for short, not to be confused with the channel of the same name), which allowed members to communicate and interact with each other in chat rooms. Users were limited to select phrases and the ability to create their own Disney XD page, which were called channels. Disney XD allowed users to watch full-length episodes from Disney Channel and other videos, play online quizzes and games, stream Radio Disney and preview new movies and music albums. It included a further feature called Shop DXD. Shop DXD used an internal currency called D-Points that users could earn from playing games and activities on the website. D-Points could be used to purchase items such as backgrounds and phrases for a user's channel or chat rooms. The service was only available in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Disney XD initiative was later de-emphasized and split into My Pages for pages and Homeroom for TV episodes. The Disney XD name was later recycled by the Disney-ABC Television Group, another division of The Walt Disney Company to launch Disney XD, an unrelated television network launched on February 13, 2009, as the successor to Toon Disney. They later added Disney Create to the website, an art gallery where users can draw and publish their art. [6] [7] Disney Create closed on May 1, 2014. [8]
Disney Channel is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney Entertainment division of The Walt Disney Company.
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as television shows and films, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aerial systems, cable television, and/or satellite television systems.
Infoseek was an American internet search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch.
Jetix was a children's entertainment brand owned by The Walt Disney Company. The brand was for a slate of action/adventure-related programming blocks and television channels. Jetix programming mainly originated from the Saban Entertainment library, airing live-action and animated series with some original programming.
Disney Television Animation (DTVA) is an American animation studio that serves as the television animation production arm of Disney Branded Television, a division of Disney General Entertainment Content, which is a division of Disney Entertainment. The studio was originally established in 1984, by Gary Krisel during the reorganization and subsequent re-incorporation of Disney following the arrival of then CEO Michael Eisner that year.
Go.com is a portal for Disney content that was created after The Walt Disney Company acquired the search engine Infoseek. Go.com is operated by Disney Interactive’s Disney Online. It began as a web portal launched by Jeff Gold. Go.com includes content from ABC News, which is owned by Walt Disney Television and is hosted under a .go.com name. Along with Time Warner's Pathfinder.com, Go.com proved to be an expensive failure for its parent company, as web users largely preferred to use search engines to access content directly, rather than using directories. In 2013, the site was transitioned from a general-interest portal to a simple landing page.
Disney Branded Television is a unit of Disney General Entertainment Content which oversees development, production and acquisition of content geared towards children, teenagers and families for Disney+, Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney XD. The unit also oversees Disney-branded unscripted series, documentaries and specials for Disney+ and the Disney channels.
Disney General Entertainment Content (DGEC), formerly ABC Group, Disney–ABC Television Group and the second incarnation of Walt Disney Television, is part of Disney Entertainment, a division of The Walt Disney Company that oversees its owned-and-operated television content, assets and sub-divisions.
Disney Interactive is an American video game and internet company that oversees various websites and interactive media owned by The Walt Disney Company.
Disney Channel is a Latin American pay television network broadcasting throughout Hispanic America and Brazil. It was officially launched on July 27, 2000 as a premium-label channel in Hispanic America, and also in Brazil back on April 5, 2001, and became a basic pay TV network in 2004.
Disney Junior is a cable and satellite television channel in Hispanic America. It is the local variant of the American channel of the same name. It is broadcast in two feeds: North Zone and South Zone. It is marketed to preschoolers. Disney Junior is operated by Disney Media Networks Latin America; part of The Walt Disney Company Latin America.
WebChat Broadcasting System, or WBS for short, is a virtual community created during the 1990s. Supported by online advertising, it was one of few services at the time to offer free integrated community services including chat rooms, message boards, and free personal web pages. Extremely popular during the mid to late 1990s in the era prior to the Dot-com bust, WBS was at that time the largest and best-known social media website on the internet. In 1998, WBS was acquired by the search engine Infoseek, which was in turn acquired by Disney/ABC. The original WebChat Broadcasting System closed on 15 September 1999 after its chat rooms were integrated into Disney's existing Go Network chat rooms. A revival of WBS was launched in 2009 and is virtually identical to the original community.
WatchESPN was a branding of the Internet television website and mobile application operated by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Corporation.
Disney XD was a British and Irish pay television channel. First launching in October 1996, it originated from the United States block of the same name, and was operated under a joint-venture between Fox Television Entertainment and Saban Entertainment, before moving along to the Euronext-operating Fox Kids Europe. It rebranded itself to Jetix in January 2005 after The Walt Disney Company's prior-purchase of Fox Family Worldwide in October 2001, and then reached its final name in August 2009 after Disney acquired Jetix Europe.
Disney XD was an Australian subscription television channel, which was a 24- hour cable and satellite channel. Disney XD was launched 10 April 2014 on Foxtel. It aired live-action, sports and animation shows which were aimed at boys aged six to fourteen.
Roku is a brand of smart TV operating systems, smart TVs, streaming devices, smart home and audio products designed and marketed by Roku, Inc. headquartered in San Jose, CA. Roku's smart TV products primarily offer access to streaming media content from online services.
PlayStation Vue was an American streaming television service that was owned by the Sony Interactive Entertainment subdivision of the Sony Corporation of America division of Sony. Launched with a limited major-market rollout on March 18, 2015, the service – which was structured in the style of a multichannel video programming distributor – combined live TV, on-demand video, and cloud-based DVR to stream television programs, movies, and sporting events directly to a PlayStation console or other supported device – including smart TVs, digital media players and apps – without a subscription to a cable or satellite television provider. Targeting cord cutters, PlayStation Vue was designed to complement subscription video-on-demand services. As of August 26, 2018, the service had approximately 745,000 subscribers. On October 29, 2019, Sony announced PlayStation Vue would be ending service on January 30, 2020, because "the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected".
Disney Channel is a Canadian English language discretionary specialty channel owned by 9329994 Canada, Inc., a division of Corus Entertainment under license from The Walt Disney Company, which began broadcasting on September 1, 2015. It is a localized version of the U.S. basic cable network of the same name, broadcasting live-action and animated programming aimed at children between the ages of 9 and 16.
Disney XD is an American pay television channel owned by the Disney Branded Television and Disney Entertainment units of The Walt Disney Company. The channel is aimed primarily at older children ages six to eleven years old.
Pluto TV is a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service owned and operated by the Paramount Streaming division of Paramount Global.