Why I Like the New DisFriends

I will confess I wasn’t sure I’d sign up for an account at the re-launched DisFriends. My account at the old site had fallen into disuse long before the place became apparently over-run by trolls.

But now I gotta say, I’m pretty much grooving on the new place. Some of it is no doubt honeymoon…I’m a geek, so I kinda like setting up the new profile page, re-friending all the old contacts, and such. But I’m also impressed by a number of the new features, which are no doubt made possible by the migration to the Ning platform. There are huge advantages to leveraging existing technology!

I particularly enjoy the fact that I can pull an RSS feed into my profile page, thus syndicating this same content into the DisFriends site. Now, if the old DisFriends had offered this feature I probably wouldn’t have used it, since the site permitted users under 18 (I seem to recall 13 being the minimum age), and sometimes Broke Hoedown goes a bit off color. And yeah, I know that kids lie to gain access to web sites…but at least the social rules have been clearly stated.

There’s a lot you can do to customize your profile page, too. I haven’t mucked around with the CSS or anything, but it’s fairly simple to upload a new header image and change your color scheme.

I’m also loving the multimedia features. Users have uploaded a lot of Disney audio, which can be streamed (but not downloaded), and the mix of tracks on the site is far more interesting and diverse than any one user could put together. I am really enjoying the mixes this guy puts together.

And yeah, there’s that whole cheesy birthdays feature….but it does seem to be popular on FaceBook, so why not?

So hey, if you’re a Disney freak and don’t mind the whole social networking craze, you could do worse than to give DisFriends a look. You can friend me if you want, or check out the Those Darn Cats Podcast group.

Disney Rolls Out XD Web Portal to UK Audience

Is it even meaningful to talk about rolling out a web site to a particular country, since the interweb doesn’t know many geographical boundaries? Let’s just for a moment pretend it is, so I can link to Mashable’s article about Disney rolling out its XD web portal/community to the United Kingdom (sent to me by the wonderful Mr Broke Hoedown):

Disney is gearing up for its UK launch, focusing on its Xtreme Digital portal that’s aimed at children. Rolled out earlier this year in the U.S., Xtreme Digital is a semi-customizable network for children to interact with Disney-branded content, chat with others, and view short film and television clips and podcasts.

This very regulated community will be spread across Europe in the coming months, with initiatives in France, Italy, Germany and Spain. In true Disney nature, the main focus of its Internet initiative will remain on its core brand. This rather sheltered approach has worked pretty well for Disney and enables the company to maintain its image, which is among the most important aspects of its brand management.

Now, I know at least one young blogger who’s not impressed by the user interface design of Disney XD: The Watchamacallit. Let’s review:

They want you to watch this video, listen to this song, chat on their single board, play this game, and rate all of them at the same time. Now I know why they bought Club Penguin. Seriously, If you can figure out how to do things one at a time, than great for you. for every one who isn’t at that level of 1337-ness, just avoid it.

Mashable goes on to remind us that Disney plans to ultimately deliver full-length films on XD. I imagine that’ll be the killer app, especially if televisions and computers eventually converge more effectively. But for the moment, I do believe the kids are still flocking to other kids-oriented sites, at least until they’re old enough to lie about their ages and hop onto FaceBook.