Chairman, Buena Vista Internet Group, and president, Disney
Online AGE 39 ADDRESS 500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank,
Calif. BIO Winebaum has been finding ways to merge his love of
words and science since he was an undergrad at Dartmouth,
majoring in biology and creative writing. Fresh out of school, he
quickly made himself indispensable in the magazine world by
figuring out the new PCs in the office before anyone else. After
a decade in the trade, and the birth of his first child, he went
on to launch two down-home but tech-savvy magazines, FamilyFun
and FamilyPC, both of which Disney bought in 1992. Now he's lord
of the company's vast online kingdom, which includes the Net's
No. 1 kids' site, Disney.com; Starwave, creator of the hugely
popular ESPN Sportszone site; and e-commerce star shop.com. 1998 POWER PLAY Disney grabbed a 43 percent stake in Infoseek in June
to gain access to the profitable portal market. "With Infoseek,
we have a much broader scope than with any of our individual
brands," Winebaum says--and double the number of eyeballs checking
in on Disney sites. PLACE YOUR BETS Most analysts only recommend
holding Disney stock right now. But you might want to snap it up
before the new portal gets unveiled (probably by the end of this
year). When it does, the company will have the No. 3 reach on the
Web, behind Yahoo! and America Online, and a brand name families
associate with a safe place to surf.
