Now that Disney has made two major acquisitions in the social gaming arena within the space of one month, perhaps it’s time to take the phenomenon seriously.

The multinational entertainment giant’s move into social gaming began in 2007 when Disney bought Club Penguin, a kids social network, for $350M.  It followed that up by purchasing Wideload Games (whose founder was behind the creation of Halo) in 2009, and this year, Disney’s gaming smorgasbord was capped off with two more acquisitions by the time July expired.

First up was Tapulous, Inc., the Palo Alto, California company that developed Tap Tap Revenge, among other social gaming hits.  Details of the acquisition have yet to be revealed.

Later in July, Disney acquired Mountain View, California-based Playdom,
creators of Facebook and MySpace social gaming successes like Sorority Life and Mobsters. The deal is reportedly worth up to $763M, since Playdom can earn out $200M in performance-based incentives to go on top of the $563M Disney is paying outright.

Disney, then, is clearly not dismissing social gaming as a fad.  Which puts them ahead of the arrogance other major-industry stalwarts have been guilty of in the past.

Take railroad companies, for example.  Back in the early 1900’s, several of them made the mistake of assuming, wrongly, that they were in the railroad business.  If they had correctly surmised that they were in the transportation business instead, perhaps they would not have dismissed blossoming trucking or airline technologies so readily as mere “fads.”

And perhaps they’d have a bigger share of the transportation business today.

So it appears that Disney gets it.  They get that they’re in the entertainment business, and by embracing what technology and social media has brought to the ballgame, Disney is putting itself in an excellent position to avoid the fate of railroads and buggy-whip manufacturers of years gone by.

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