Handbag.com Adds News Aggregator In Revamp As Rivals Chase Women’s Market
By Robert Andrews - Mon 17 Sep 2007 02:04 AM PST
As part of its redesign, women’s portal Handbag.com is adding MyHandbag, a personal news aggregator allowing readers to consume headlines from rival sites. Editorial director Debbie Djordjevic tells Press Gazette: “It’s basically like MyYahoo, in that people will be allowed to enter their own RSS feeds. They will be able to include content from our competitors – we welcome that – and they will be able to bookmark things and create their own blogs.”
The site, which was started in 1999 and bought by Hearst’s NatMags from the Barclay brothers for a reported £22 million in October, last week began an overhaul including more video, blogs and public profiles. It does not yet appear to be complete and the MyHandbag link does not yet appear to include the aggregator offering. While rival glossy publishers have tried to make their individual titles work as online brands, Handbag.com, a pure-play online outfit, has long boasted an impressive position in the women’s online content market for NatMags, posting 1.4 million unique users in May (ABCe returns).
More women are now online in the UK than men and spend more time on the net, according to Ofcom research published last month (via BusinessWeek). Now rivals are taking NatMags’ cue - IPC is planning to pool content from Women’s Weekly, Now and Woman’s Own in its own forthcoming women’s portal (and earlier this year launched HouseToHome with articles from Living etc, Ideal Home and Homes & Gardens and more) while Emap last week announced plans to pool content from Grazia, Heat, Closer and First in a new women’s portal (it’s also planning a fashion portal based on its Drapers, Pop, Premier Kids, Pure Women show and WGSN.com brands).
Posted in: Companies, NatMags, Entertainment, Female Content, Media, Magazines
