Disney will pay up to $700 million for Club Penguin
Disney is buying its way into social networking. The company today picked up kid-focused game and networking site Club Penguin for $350 million in cash. Disney will pay up to $350 million more if the company hits a series of performance goals by 2009.Club Penguin is described as a "virtual world," where kids can interact with one another and play games. The site was founded in 2005 and has 700 thousand paid subscribers.
TechCrunch reports that Club Penguin's been on the market for a while, and that previous bidders had passed on the company because of its habit of giving large amounts of money to charity. Another interesting note is the fact that penguins are kind of hot these days with March of the Penguins and Happy Feet, and Surf's Up in the theaters and DVD stores. How long this trend can continue is anybody's guess. Of course, Linux could become a huge hit with the kids next, and then everybody'll want to join the site in the hopes of being like Tux.
