The Walt Disney Company has bought a social networking website aimed at children, gambling as much as £340 million that those as young as six will join the craze.

Club Penguin has more than 700,000 subscribers who pay about £3 a month to pilot a character that can play with and talk to other “penguins”. Including children who opt to use a less sophisticated free version, the site claims 12 million active users.

The site, aimed at the “tweenage” market of children aged between 6 and 14, was set up in 2005 by three Canadian fathers, Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe. Each will bag an initial $115 million from the sale. Disney is making an initial payment of $350 million, with the prospect of $350 million more if Club Penguin hits its targets over two years.

It is thought that the company won a bidding war with Time Warner’s AOL division when the latter offered $500 million but could not provide the same opportunities to sell merchandise as Disney.

The co-founders will continue to manage Club Penguin, which they say was inspired by Disney’s theme parks. Mr Merrifield will become an executive vice-president at Disney.

Mr Merrifield said: “We have been searching for an organisation that not only shares our values and concerns for children, but also has the ability and desire to help us bring Club Penguin to more children throughout the world.”

Many British parents are familiar with the site. It attracted 4.7 million users in June, according to a market research company, up 160 per cent on the same month a year earlier. The site is estimated to have made about £10 million in subscription fees in the past year. Yet the deal represents a gamble for Disney, analysts say, given the tendency of users to jump to new sites. Neopets, a children’s site developed in Britain in 1999, and which carries heavy commercial content, has seen its growth slow over the past year. Neopets has been accused of immersing youngsters in advertising.

Explaining its policy of charging subscriptions, Club Penguin said: “By remaining ad-free, we can provide our users a safe haven from marketing.”

It joins a $67 billion media empire that has hitherto failed to make serious inroads on the web.

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