A mother of two from Brisbane has put her house and $300,000 on the line to take on corporate behemoth Disney with a new social networking site for pre-teens.

Karen Orford, 40, has just launched ekidnaworld.com after an 18-month slog that, in her own words, nearly killed her.

Brisbane mum Karen Orford.

She came up with the idea after her two daughters, aged 7 and 9, reached an age at which they were itching to chat online but Orford couldn't find a site that she was comfortable would be safe enough.

So she contracted a Brisbane technology company to build Ekidnaworld. She says it sets itself apart from Disney's Club Penguin by being "quintessentially Australian" and includes a built-in safety mechanism whereby parents have to enter a password before their child can add each "friend" on the site.