Lane Merrifield @ Club Penguin: The 'Dragon' Who Reimagined Social Networking for Kids

Web Masters

Club Penguin was a virtual world that its founder, Lane Merrifield, also describes as a social network. However, depending on your age, you might have never heard of it. That's because Club Penguin was for children. And it was enormously popular, having over 200 million registered users around the world at its peak.

So why did Lane and his team build Club Penguin? And what distinguishes a social network for children from other social networking websites? That's what we explore on this episode of Web Masters. Lane shares the story of building Club Penguin, starting with where the idea came from, through the company's eventual purchase by Disney for $350 million, and the experience of running the virtual world after the Disney acquisition.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

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