Industry | Digital content |
---|---|
Founded | 1993 |
Defunct | 1998 |
Fate | Acquired by The Walt Disney Company, 1998 |
Successor | Walt Disney Internet Group |
Headquarters | Bellevue, Washington, U.S. |
Key people | Paul Allen, Mike Slade, Patrick Naughton |
Starwave was a Seattle, Washington-based software and website company, founded in 1993 by Paul Allen, [1] co-founder of Microsoft and led by CEO Mike Slade. [2] [3] The company produced original CD-ROM titles, including Muppets Inside , and titles for Clint Eastwood, Sting, [4] and Peter Gabriel. They were the original developers of Castle Infinity , the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game for children, but Starwave's most lasting mark was in the area of web content sites. They developed ESPN.com, ABCNEWS.com, Outside Online, and Mr. Showbiz.com among other sites, setting the standard for much of the commercial Internet explosion of the late 1990s. Starwave also developed the first site and publishing system for Jim Cramer's TheStreet.com.
The company merged with Infoseek and was later sold to The Walt Disney Company. In April 1998, Disney purchased the outstanding shares of Starwave from Allen [5] [6] after an initial buy of about 30% in 1997. [1] The new entity, Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG) developed the Go.com portal.
In 2004, Disney re-activated the Starwave identity as Starwave Mobile, which published casual games for mobile phones. [7] They published several Scarface licensed games including Scarface: Money. Power. Respect. and games from Capybara Games including Critter Crunch .
Paul Gardner Allen was an American businessman, computer programmer, researcher, investor, film producer, explorer, and philanthropist. He is best known for co-founding Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which helped spark the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Allen was ranked as the 44th-wealthiest person in the world by Forbes with an estimated net worth of $20.3 billion at the time of his death in October 2018.
Castle Infinity was the first commercially launched MMOG for children. It was launched by Starwave Corporation in 1996, and featured personalized avatars, an embedded message system and live chat in a 2D side scrolling game world. It survives as a freeware MMOG.
Infoseek was an American internet search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch.
Toontown Online, commonly known as Toontown, was a 2003 massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on a cartoon animal world, developed by Disney's Virtual Reality Studio and Schell Games, and published by The Walt Disney Company.
Disney Interactive Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher owned by The Walt Disney Company through Disney Interactive. Prior to its closure in 2016, it developed and distributed multi-platform video games and interactive entertainment worldwide.
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 Mobile is an American division of Disney Consumer Products, which is in itself a division of The Walt Disney Company, that designs mobile apps, content and services.
ESPN Inc. is an American multinational sports media conglomerate majority-owned by the Walt Disney Company, with Hearst Communications as an equity stakeholder.
Disney Interactive is an American video game and internet company that oversees various websites and interactive media owned by The Walt Disney Company.
XDA is a mobile software development community launched on 20 December 2002. Although discussion primarily revolves around Android, members also talk about many other operating systems and mobile development topics.
Infillion, formerly known as TrueX, Inc. and SocialVibe, is an American digital advertising company founded in 2007 by Joe Marchese, Brandon Mills and David Levy. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles and New York City. It was previously owned by 21st Century Fox, from 2014 until Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019, and The Walt Disney Company from 2019 until 2020.
Timothy M. Armstrong is an American business executive. He was formerly the CEO of Oath Inc., then a subsidiary of Verizon Communications that served as the umbrella company of its digital content subdivisions, including AOL and Yahoo!. Previously, he was the CEO of AOL Inc. from 2009 until its purchase by Verizon in 2015.
RealNetworks LLC is a provider of artificial intelligence and computer vision based products. RealNetworks was a pioneer in Internet streaming software and services. They are based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The company also provides subscription-based online entertainment services and mobile entertainment and messaging services.
Patrick Naughton is an American software developer and convicted sex offender. He is one of the creators of the Java programming language.
Playdom was an online social network game developer popular on Facebook, Google+ and Myspace. The company was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area by University of California, Berkeley graduates Ling Xiao and Chris Wang and Swarthmore College graduate Dan Yue. In 2009, the market for games played on social networking sites was valued at $300 million, consisting mostly of online sales of virtual goods.
Disney's Animated Storybook is a point-and-click adventure interactive storybook video game series based on Walt Disney feature animations and Pixar films that were released throughout the 1990s. They were published by Disney Interactive for personal computers for children ages four to eight years old. Starting from 1994, most of the entries in the series were developed by Media Station. They have the same plots as their respective films, though abridged due to the limited medium.
Wall of Sound was an American music website that provided news, reviews, and information on musical artists. The site was launched and developed in the mid-1990s by Paul Allen's software and website company, Starwave, in Seattle, Washington. In April 1997, Starwave entered into a joint venture partnership with ABC News, which expanded the coverage of the company's internet services into the ABC domain. A year later, Wall of Sound – along with Starwave sites such as Mr. Showbiz, NBA.com and NASCAR Online – was part of a joint e-commerce initiative between ABC and ESPN.
Rich LeFurgy is an American advertising consultant and investor. The founding chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, he left a senior position at a Madison Avenue agency in 1995, becoming one of the first advertising executives to shift from traditional to digital media. Described as the "godfather of internet advertising standards," LeFurgy was central to the development and adoption of the standards that guide online advertising.