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There’s Glam Media, iVillage, DivineCaroline, and now Shine. It’s Yahoo’s new site, newly launched today. They are trying to reach women ages 25 to 54. Yahoo says already 40 million women in that age range visiting Yahoo! each month. Though they pass it off as trying to help women navigate their careers and life, it’s probably more about advertising. This is a group that advertisers are clamoring to reach.
This is Yahoo’s first site for a single demographic. The site focuses on: parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology. You can get your Yahoo mail or even blog. Though it lacks a lot of advanced features, it’s really easy to blog on the site.
I looked through some of the profiles of women who’ve started blogging on Shine. A few have their own blogs and probably see Shine as a way to get an even bigger audience. None of their URLs were links though, so I decided to try a quick post. It’s true! No linking in the “About Me” section but you can in an actual post. You can also add video, or edit the HTML. Judging from the past this could pass along some decent page rank. I haven’t checked if there is a “no follow” on comments.
The advantage of Yahoo is the quality content they offer through a partnership with media companies like Hearst Communications and Rodale. They will produce exclusive content for the site. Rodale publishes the popular health magazine Prevention. This is a good partnership, considering women especially trust the internet for health advice.
Comscore recently reported that 60% of women go online to get health information. Hearst publishes Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and other magazines that are aimed at women.
It seems like a smart move for Yahoo – and a much-needed revenue stream. Just a warning though – they don’t have shine.com – it’s a subdomain of Yahoo – at http://shine.yahoo.com.
