{"id":572399,"date":"2010-05-20T11:10:45","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T15:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"tag:contentnext.com,2010-05-20:article\/419-interview-ivillages-kahn-from-beauty-to-pregancy-to-mobile-and-premium"},"modified":"2010-05-20T11:10:45","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T15:10:45","slug":"interview-ivillages-kahn-from-beauty-to-pregnancy-to-mobile-and-premium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/572399","title":{"rendered":"Interview: iVillage’s Kahn: From Beauty To Pregnancy, To Mobile And Premium"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jodi
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Since NBC Universal (NYSE: GE<\/a>) acquired iVillage<\/a> for $600 million four years ago<\/a>, the women’s content network has tried a variety of ways to make good on that deal. After several brand restarts, NBCU brought in<\/a> Readers Digest Association’s global digital head Jodi Kahn 18 months ago to finally put the network on better course. To do that, Kahn has been been on a hiring and site-launch spree the past few months. On the hiring end, she has tapped<\/a> publishing vets like Glam Media’s Joe Lagani to run ad sales, while she has reformed iVillage’s verticals, like entertainment, into fuller sites. <\/p>\n

Today, iVillage is launching its two newest sites, Pregnancy & Parenting<\/a> and Beauty & Style<\/a>, and Kahn is following the same pattern that has guided her through the other vertical rollouts.\n<\/p>\n

Like the other four that have appeared after iVillage’s Entertainment site launch<\/a> in September, both the Pregnancy and Beauty channels offer the promise of personalization tools, along with a mix of straightforward editorial and community features draped with e-commerce functions. While she declined to discuss how the pending Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA<\/a>) acquisition of a 51 percent stake in NBC would affect her moves going forward, in a phone interview with paidContent, Kahn said she’s sticking to the basic playbook she outlined when she started the job: Do as much research as possible, followed by a lot of testing and then see what works. The following is an edited version of our conversation.<\/p>\n

paidContent: There are a lot of sites for new moms and makeover how-to’s. What’s different about these two new sites?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Jodi Kahn:<\/strong> As was the case for the other sites we launched over the past several months—Entertainment, Food, Astrology, Health—we did a variety of research that told us what women really wanted from the web. They wanted a mix of expert opinion and community and they wanted to find it all quickly and easily. That’s not something that most sites offer. <\/p>\n

Specifically, the Pregnancy site is focusing on topics that range from getting pregnant to having a family, all the issues of dealing with children through the tween and teen years. We\u2019re positioning this site as \u201cWe\u2019re not your doctor, we\u2019re not your mother, we\u2019re a friend helping you through your pregnancy.\u201d That said, the site will feature information that\u2019s weighted equally from moms and doctors as well. <\/p>\n

The Beauty site is just that—tips on makeovers and style, without surrounding it all with the latest news on celebrity looks and glamour trends. Speaking of what women want online, we’ve brought in YouTube star Lauren Luke<\/a> as the site\u2019s digital expert makeup contributor. Her online how-to beauty videos have been seen over 77 million times, which shows how highly regarded she is.<\/p>\n

What are the next sites on iVillage’s rollout list?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We have a Home site coming in August. After that, we\u2019ll be releasing a new community platform that will underlie all the site channels this summer as well. Alongside those plans, we’re going to concentrate more on mobile.<\/p>\n

What are the mobile plans?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to do a reverse of what\u2019s usually done. We\u2019re going to create some original mobile content, and then rework it for the web. We’ve already done that in one instance. Our Astrology Horoscope page originated as an iPhone app. Of course, we\u2019ll also take some stuff from the regular websites and apply it to mobile as well.<\/p>\n

Any plans to charge for any of that content?<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

We probably aren’t going to charge for the mobile content, at least not right away. We already do have a tiered paid content system in place for tarot card readings on the Astrology site. The prices range from $9.95 for a month’s subscription to $14.95 for three months and $29.95 for a whole year. We’re taking what we’re learning there and will apply it to other areas of the network. We don’t have any specific plans at the moment, but it could possibly center around a particular service offering. Like everything else, we\u2019ll pilot something, study and plot the direction.<\/p>\n

You talked about the mix of community voices and professional editorial and experts across the sites. How do you view Yahoo’s acquisition<\/a> this week of freelance aggregator Associated Content? Is that the kind of model you might explore?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m interested to see what Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO<\/a>) does with Associated Content. I think it was a great purchase, and we\u2019re going to explore ways of bringing more writers and voices into the site. But even thinking about that sort of thing is down the road; we\u2019re going to stick to our knitting first before trying anything like that.\n<\/p>\n

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