ChaChing! At least if you’re Disney it does. My son recently joined Club Penguin, Disney’s online social network where your avatar is a penguin, you can have puffles (pets), your own igloo, earn money and spend it on various items such as decorating your igloo or purchasing items to adorn your penguin or puffle.

Don’t have a kid? It’s still worth checking out. Here’s why…Club Penguin is Disney’s giant leap into social networking and I believe it will shape and influence the experience of kids aged 6-12 in the online world forever. Wherever we go we meet kids who are into Club Penguin – I mean wherever we go. There are 12 million registered users of the site. It’s been around for barely two years, you have to pay a membership fee to take advantage of all the entertainment and fun, secret aspects of it and kids want in. And get this, Disney has relied only on its website and word of mouth. Disney has figured out how to make money from social networking and is already working on its next iteration for girls called DisneyFairies.com.

Let’s see how many social networks, in an effort to monetize start looking at Disney and figuring out ways to create opportunities that people will be willing to pay for within its community.