Disney Testing a Revamped, Less Ambitious Go.com Site
After a year of mishaps with its Internet strategy, Walt Disney Co. is preparing to unveil a revamped version of its Go.com Web site that includes a number of enhancements but also reflects the company’s deflated online ambitions.
Disney’s search engine site--which debuts in test mode today at https://beta.go.com--has been redesigned to produce an array of content, recommendations and advertisements in response to user queries, instead of merely spitting out a list of search results.
But even while adding new features, Disney is reducing Go.com’s strategic role.
Launched with significant fanfare 18 months ago, Go.com was conceived as the flagship for Disney’s push to extend its media empire onto the Net. It was to be the parent site for all of Disney’s online properties and a challenger to Yahoo. But in August, Yahoo was the most popular Internet portal, and Go.com ranked only 20th, according to PC Data Online.
Now, company officials say Go.com will take a lesser place in the Disney Internet stable, as more of a sibling than a parent to ESPN.com, ABCNews.com and other company Web sites.
Go.com will function as a Web guide specializing in the entertainment and lifestyle areas in which Disney excels, said Steve Bornstein, chairman of Disney’s Internet Group.
“It is not positioned as [a portal],” Bornstein said. And the Go Network, a brand Disney tried to build by plastering the logo throughout its television and theme park empire, “is not a proposition that we will be promoting.”
The retooling of Disney’s Web strategy comes on the heels of a year that Bornstein acknowledged was filled with “interesting ups and downs, mostly downs.”
One of the most nettlesome setbacks came last May, when Disney was forced to pay $21 million to another Web site, GoTo.com, to settle a trademark infringement lawsuit, and had to abandon a stoplight logo Disney used to promote its Go Network.
Disney also shuttered a failing online toy company this year; became involved in a privacy controversy when that bankrupt company, Toysmart.com, tried to sell data it kept on its customers; and tried to distance itself from an executive caught in an FBI sex sting.
Meanwhile, Disney’s Internet division continued to rack up heavy losses, including an $83.2-million operating loss on $86.3 million in revenue in the three months ended June 30.
The tracking stock Disney issued to reflect performance of its Internet holdings has been on a long skid from its high of $37.69 in January. Disney’s Internet Group closed at $14.38 on Thursday, down 6 cents, in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Bornstein and other executives said they are hoping to rebound by tethering Disney’s Internet strategy to the company’s core brands and strengths.
Many of the company’s separate Internet sites are already solid, if not profitable, performers. Disney.com and ESPN.com are leading sites in the entertainment and sports categories. And the company’s ABC.com site has seen traffic surge, largely because of the huge popularity of the online version of the hit TV game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
“There’s no question that on-air content drives online usage,” said Steve Wadsworth, president of Disney’s Internet Group.
The retooling of Go.com is designed to drive even more traffic to those sites. When users type in a search term they will get results served up in two pieces. On the left side of the screen are the unbiased search results and recommendations. On the right are content and services from Disney’s own sources or partners. Searching “Sammy Sosa” for instance, will produce the Chicago Cubs slugger’s stats from ESPN.com.
Disney also plans to unveil in mid-October an auction site where collectors will be able to bid on company memorabilia and authenticated merchandise. The site is being operated as a joint venture with online auction house EBay. Executives said the site will feature limited-edition lithographs and collectibles, as well as goods plucked from Disney warehouses ranging from the costume Glenn Close wore in “101 Dalmations” to the 15-foot letters from the original Disneyland sign in Anaheim.
Executives declined to say how much revenue they expect from the auction site, but Wadsworth said they have 90,000 items available for auction and expect many of them to go for “tens of thousands of dollars.”
