Aiming for a wider market, internet company Yahoo! has launched a new women’s site http://shine.yahoo.com Shine, which it hopes will capture the estimated 40 million females aged between 25 and 54 who visit its portal each month.
Whether Yahoo! will, as per its mission statement, create one single destination for its female visitors is one thing but it may help that the company and its clients consolidate their advertising aimed at women.
The new media site will have nine categories based on what women traditionally read both online and in print: fashion & beauty, parenting, food, at home, healthy living, entertainment & culture, work & money, astrology and love and relationships.
Content for the new site will be drawn from lifestyle publications like Conde Nast Publications and Hearst Corporation but Yahoo! has also created a brand new editorial team which will write original content and also pick out reader’s blog posts.
Shine is perhaps aiming to emulate successful sites which have captured a large female audience. For example, iVillage.com, which has been in operation since 1995 and has around 17 million unique visitors per month. Scott Moore, senior vice-president and head of Yahoo! Media said: “We’re executing on Yahoo!’s starting point strategy by ensuring that women who start their day with Yahoo! are offered a more relevant experience.
“Yahoo! Shine adds an important piece to our media portfolio, which already includes sites that are No 1 in the news, sports, finance and entertainment categories.”
The site has a strong focus on user-generated content, with a blog automatically ready for use for all Yahoo! members and a side panel on the site dedicated to members’ ‘chatter’.
By Marie Boran
