Disney deal brings Club Penguin cold cash

Excerpts from the blog

You can hear the ka-ching sound all the way down here in Seattle, after Kelowna, B.C.-based Club Penguin sold to Disney on Wednesday in a deal worth up to $700 million.

Disney is buying Club Penguin as part of a bigger effort to develop online portals based on franchises, such as a pirates site that blends games, video and advertising.

I wonder how much the 60-person company will interact with Disney's Internet team in Seattle's Smith Tower. If immigration issues weren't so sticky, I'd guess they might combine at least some of the operations.

Club Penguin is interesting all by itself. It has proved that you can build a big subscription service catering to kids.

The two-year-old company has more than 700,000 subscribers paying $5.95 a month, plus more than 12 million "activated" users.

In the announcement, the site was described as "one of the fastest growing online destinations for kids ages 6 to 14. The site features animated penguin avatars that inhabit a snow-covered virtual world, converse with other users, participate in group activities and create and furnish a virtual home with currency earned inside the game."

Disney's paying $350 million cash for the company and giving it the option of $350 million more if it hits growth targets.

Web 2.0, Seattle-style

Marcelo Calbucci, a former Microsoftie who started blogging-tool company Sampa.com, is keeping a nifty list of Seattle-area Web startups at his Seattle 2.0 blog.

It's not definitive — it's based on sometimes sketchy Alexa traffic numbers — but it's still interesting and fun. Here's his current Top 10:

1. Zillow

2. iLike

3. 43 Things (Robot Co-op)

4. Newsvine

5. BuddyTV

6. Wetpaint

7. BlueDot

8. Jobster

9. PayScale

10. Redfin

Starting up on TV

A new cable-TV show called "Startup Junkies" will feature Seattle's Earth Class Mail when it debuts in January on the MOJO cable channel.

The eight-episode documentary will profile the company and "serial entrepreneur" Ron Wiener, who started the mail-handling service in 2004.

Earth Class Mail, formerly known as Document Command, provides a service that scans mail at a processing center in Portland, then sends it via e-mail to subscribers. Customers include businesses, expatriates, RVers or soldiers stationed abroad.

Seattle's Screaming Flea Productions has begun videotaping.

From the release: "One storyline follows the ups and downs of Series A fundraising activities, including a presentation by Wiener at a Keiretsu Forum angel investor meeting."

The cast also includes "Earth Class Mail employees who've worked in multiple startups throughout their careers — classic 'Startup Junkies,' the release said:

"Imagine if a TV show had captured the exciting early days of the largest household brands," says Matt Chan, president of Screaming Flea Productions. "We expect the series to be both educational and entertaining — featuring the challenges of fundraising, hiring the right talent and the all-important task of scaling a business."

We'll have to see how it compares with Zoodango founder James Sun's performance on "The Apprentice."

Most influential?

A survey reported Tuesday by the Computing Technology Industry Association, a Microsoft-friendly group known as CompTIA, ranked the Microsoft Internet Explorer as the most influential tech product of the past 25 years.

The result came from the group's survey of 471 IT pros. It's kind of interesting, but I'll bet you'd get different results every time you did one of these surveys.

From the release: "Internet Explorer was selected as the most influential product of the past quarter-century by 66 percent of the IT professionals surveyed.

"The first version of the browser launched in 1995, and by 1999 Internet Explorer had become the market's predominant Web browser, a position it still holds today."

Microsoft Word was second place, chosen by 50 percent of respondents. Microsoft Excel and Apple's iPod tied for fourth place, with 49 percent each.

Others on the list, in descending order:

• BlackBerry, 39 percent

• Adobe Photoshop, 35 percent

• McAfee VirusScan, 32 percent

• Netscape Navigator, the browser that preceded Explorer in 1994, 31 percent

• Palm, 31 percent

This material has been edited for print publication.

Brier Dudley's blog appears Thursdays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.