The future of Disney Plus is a confused mess | Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro wants the streaming platform to become a kind of everything app

Wasn’t Hulu supposed to be shutting down too? Whatever happened to that idea?

>Now, the plan seems to be a unification of Disney’s various applications — like My Disney Experience and Disney Cruise Line Navigator — that would turn Disney Plus into a one-stop shop for all things Disney. But a souped-up Disney Plus that also functions as a hub for information about upcoming theme park trips and cruises does not exactly sound like something that would be very enjoyable to use.

>What this does sound a lot like is Disney taking cues from other tech companies like Meta that have a history of juicing engagement on their various platforms by adding features that no one asked for. The idea of Disney Plus going this route calls to mind the way that Instagram became an overbloated, unintuitive platform as executives built Stories / Reels / Shopping features into it in order to keep people from jumping ship to other social media apps. Most of us can agree that this approach to boosting engagement led to a markedly worse user experience, but at the same time, it did keep users logging on.

>Like all major streamers, one of Disney Plus’ biggest goals is to keep its subscribers from leaving the platform. One of the ways Disney can realistically do that is to keep releasing new projects that people want to watch, but D’Amaro’s recent comments make it sound like we might soon see a Disney Plus that feels more like an overbusy, maze-like mall that’s designed to get people to spend money on things they weren’t even thinking about in the first place.