Resources and communities abound online for moms. I am thinking about this as BlogHer ramps up next week in Chicago. I went last year and had a great time. I cannot make it this year (despite the added bonus the Grinderman is making one of its four US performances in Chicago next week). And I have blogged before about some of the developments in social networks for moms and/or parents.
How can all of these social networks/communities survive? How can each find a critical mass of members to reach that tipping point that becoms the magical self-sustaining community?
Meanwhile, older new media like iVillage and BabyCenter/ParentCenter and even older, old media like Gannett newspapers are starting to introduce social media and consumer generated media into their mix. IVillage and the one-two-punch of BabyParentCenter have managed message board-based communities in one way or another for years. That experience in what it takes to nurture and grow activity (vs. launch a Web 2.0 enabled service) will help them regain ground they may have lost.
Then there is old media. This month's Wired print publication (not what I mean by old media) has a great comeback story for the Cincinnati Gannett paper and their embrace of consumer generated media. Specifically, they call out CincyMoms, the consumer content site run by The Enquirer.
A couple of years ago, old media like newspapers didn't seem to understand the value of consumer generated content. And even the old new media seemed to be having trouble re-tooling their businesses and platforms to be more social media friendly. Web 2.0 start-ups like BlogHer, MothersClick, and Minti seemed to be the wave of the future. Now old-new and old-old is giving Web 2.0 a run for their money.
They Need 2x Affinity to Have a Chance
Every social network or community must have some meaningful affinity that pulls the members together. Being a mom is not enough. In all cases, for these services to become viable businesses (not iVillage-sized buisnesses but long tail, Web 2.0-size businesses) there has to be a meaningful additional affinity.
cincyMoms - It's Hyper-Local
Home/Talk/Events/Pics/Resources - that's their main menu and between that and the tag cloud below, I love their simplicity. They are not trying to be all things to all people. The draw is that their audience lives near Cincinatti. As the wired article points out, the average annual revenue per online user (Enquirer online, not necessarily cincyMoms users) is about $35 vs. $350 for the print customers. To some extent, The Enquirer will be trying to promote print products to onlne users. And they will also be hedging their bets with an onlne business that can become sustainable should their print business eventually dip below viability.
CincyMoms has some great community happening in the form of boards (that are not all that different than blog posts except they happen in common thread areas vs. personal spaces.) Here are their self-reported stats:
4518 of 7212 Members have made 82851 posts in 83 forums, with the last post on 07/22/07 12:44pm by: candiceschmitz. There are currently 9056 topics and 1240 active topics since you last visited. There are 13946 archived posts in 2011 archived topics
Pretty good activity for a 6 month-old site.
The headlines are pulled from "Talk" - the message board space. Karen Gutierrez is presumably the "managing editor" or community leader as she has a blog with a handful of posts on it. There is a bit of old media here in the way her blog feels like a simple editorial column, but I think my desire to see everyone embrace every facet of blogging (posting regularly, revealing themselves, getting into dialogue in the comments, etc..) is a bit unrealistic and unwarrranted.
Events hammers home the local value with easy-to-browse listings of where and when the local Anime Club meets. There are hidden gems in Resources which I hope grow such as this list of pediatricians that the cincyMom community assembled via a survey. There are member profiles, supposedly, as any SNS must have yet all I get are error messages when I try to call them up.
Moms + Local is a strong combination of affinities. Now that Gannett has embraced social media, I would expect this type of service to grow in communities across the country. They can use the power of the Enquirer to promote it, far more than any boot-strapped start-up could afford to do. And since the user experience is so extremely simple, they may actually win users who shied away from technology historically.
Work It! Mom - It's About The Work
Work It! Mom is pretty much what the name promises - a community where working moms can:
- start a blog
- participate in topical message boards
- write and read articles
- write and read interviews
- post and answer questions
- form groups
- read mom+career relevant traditional news stories
There's a lot here. Perhaps, too much. Working + Mom seems like a powerful affinity combination. Recently, I had some questions about parenting. Okay, recently, I realized that I had no idea how to be a good dad. Being a working dad, I actually picked up a book designed specifically for working parents. I get a sense of the tension about the issues surrounding work and being a good parent. So I would expect this service to be serving a real demand.
There is not much activity there yet. It is new. But I wonder whether their attempt to bundle so many features (Gather + ParentCenter + Yahoo Answers +Yahoo Gorups) was just trying to do too much. It's almost as if some VC's got together and said, "what's the killer recipe for a Web 2.0 play for working moms".
And as it turns out, the founders are not just working moms, they are VC's. Their board of advisors is dominated by VCs. Nataly Kogan, Co-Founder & CEO is a McKinsey-ite with lots of VC experience in early-stage funding. Victoria Grace, Co-Founder & President was a banker at Salomon Brothers and also a VC (why is it that VCs never identify the VC they worked for?). Nataly does a good job of maintaining her blog.
Doesn't mean they aren't sincerely trying to build a business they are passionate about. Since their advisors are dominated by other VCs, it does make me wonder if they aren't driven by the "Flip This House" mentality of some VCs.
Here's how they describe their approach to user contribution:
"We're trying something different at Work It, Mom! Instead of hiring lots of editors and writers we would like to build up the greatest library of useful, interesting, and intriguing articles, interviews, and essays for professional moms by relying on contributions from real moms. We want Work It, Mom! to speak through your honest, revealing, and inspiring voices and to be the place where other busy professional moms come for advice, support, ideas, and a bit of laughter and relief from the daily juggle of work and family."
Only time will tell if Work It! makes It! They are trying to do a lot and the sincerity in their blog is undermined by what looks more like stock photography on their homepage. The affinity of Moms + Work is a strong one. But community development is hard work and it's not enough to build a platform with lots of community features. Even if your goal is the quick 10x-and-I'm-out, the will need to work hard to build a loyal user base that has large readership and that dedicated 1%-30% who actually create content.
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