Disney Goes 2.0

This week, the Walt Disney Co. is beta launching a community site aimed at mothers. The site, which will be known as Family.com, was designed based on input from 30,000 mothers surveyed in the past year, as well as an advisory panel made up of "Mommy bloggers."

According to Yahoo, Family.com is designed to be "a one-stop site for parents, especially mothers, providing everything from Internet search to user-generated articles on key topics such as education and food, and, eventually, a "ParentPedia," a compilation of information on 1,000 topics that can be expanded by users."

While joining the Web 2.0 community may seem like a natural progression for most companies, Disney is notoriously hyper-vigilant about their image. Allowing a community to contribute content to a Disney-branded site seems contrary to the company's usual business practices, although the site will have moderators checking for foul language and any comments or content that go against the site's "house rules" according to Paul Yanover, executive vice president of Disney Online.

Family.com is going to be going up against some pretty heavy hitters in the mommy community, including established community sites like iVillage and BabyCenter that have had parenting communities long before the current wave of community-driven sites. However, it also brings the Disney name to the table, a brand image that already has family-friendly written all over it. They have one of the most recognizable brands in the world, and the concept of branding a site that contains non-corporate-created content has to have them just a little bit worried about the risk. However, with topics pre-determined and appropriately-trained moderators vetting the content to ensure it sticks close to the Disney ideal, it might fit very well in the parenting niche, providing a trusted source for information that isn't solely a corporate shill.