The Walt Disney Co.’s Disney Online has acquired parenting blog platform Babble Media Inc., adding its 200 overwhelmingly mom bloggers to Disney Interactive Media Group’s Moms and Family portfolio of family-oriented properties. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Disney Interactive won’t be taking over the blogs. Instead, it will be selecting non-time-sensitive content from its Moms and Family group and integrating it throughout Babble, extending the Disney brand by reaching out to its audience where they already are rather than striving to pull them directly to a purely Disney environment.
Launched in December 2006, Babble reaches about 5 million unique monthly visitors and reports growing at an average rate of 15 percent every month. It was founded by Rufus Griscom and his wife Alisa Volkman. Griscom previously co-founded Nerve.com and spun off Babble from its edgier brethren.
Babble will remain headquartered in New York. Griscom and Volkman will join the Disney Interactive Media Group, as will Babble’s employees.
“Parents’ relationships with Disney are founded in stories, and Disney’s best stories are about families. We believe that Babble and Disney can harness the power of storytelling to inform, entertain and empower parents everywhere,” said Brooke Chaffin, senior vice president of Moms and Family, Disney Interactive Media Group. “With more than 3.9 million mom blogs in the US alone, Disney Interactive recognizes and values the important and powerful role moms have taken on in new media.”
Related links:
http://disney.go.com/disneyinteractivestudios/company.html
Press release: http://tinyurl.com/77bgt8z
Photo by Flickr user JakoJellema (7j.nl), used under Creative Commons license
