Looking to cash in on the rapidly growing demographic of wired women, Wire Networks is launching Prevention, a women's fitness and health site, on Thursday. Condé Nast will be proffering its own women's fitness site this summer.
"People talk about women being a niche online, but they are going to make up a significant proportion of the population online, and they have as many diverse interests as men," says Yvette DeBow, vice president of Jupiter Communications, which published a report on the online women's market last year. "There's a trend of broadening the Web content directed at women, especially health and fitness."
Women now account for 37 percent of the online population, and Jupiter projects that women will be spending US$3.5 billion online by 2000. Despite those numbers, there are very few commercial sites with content specifically directed at women. Outside of Women's Wire, the commercial sites most trafficked by women are topical ones like ParentSoup, Epicurious, or HomeArts.
Wire Networks, creators of Women's Wire, is quickly setting up a network of female-oriented Web sites, in an attempt to position itself as a market leader before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon. A general-interest women's magazine launched in 1995, Women's Wire draws more than 800,000 visitors a month. The site's success spawned Beatrice's Web Guide in January, a co-branded women's Web directory created with Yahoo. Prevention will be the third launch, created in conjunction with Prevention magazine.
"I think Women's Wire was the right thing to do to create a context to bring women onto the Web. But people tend to affiliate with their hobbies," says Marleen McDaniel, CEO of Wire Networks. "We're looking into diversity of content."
Wire Network's plan is to continue launching a women's site each quarter, focusing on media partnerships in TV and radio; upcoming sites will be also be focused on topical content such as parenting or travel, à la Prevention, and will target focused demographics like teens and seniors.
Condé Nast is also quickly claiming its corner of the women's market. Already producing Epicurious and Swoon, an amalgamation of its glossy content, its upcoming women's site will be its first original content created for the Web. The site will focus on health, fitness, and nutrition, and will launch in early summer.
MSN also recently launched a "show" based around women's fitness called Personal Trainer, a spinoff of its general-interest women's show UnderWire. MSN's new season lineup features a slate of content intended to be "female-friendly," including several parenting sites and the workplace serial, @Watercooler.
The veering away from glossy-style general-interest women's sites is a welcome one to Jupiter's DeBow. She comments, "The market is beginning to mature. It's not 'Oh my god, women are going online!' anymore. Today it's accepted that we're here and we're interested in things that aren't just stupid."
