wowOwow.com - The Women on the Web

wowOwow.com is a new online network for women that is founded, run, and written by some very well known and influential ladies. The site's contributors hail mostly from the media, and include journalists Lesley Stahl and Peggy Noonan and entertainers Whoopi Goldberg, Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, and Marlo Thomas. wowOwow.com’s target audience is women over 40, and the heart of the site is a daily feature called “The Conversation.” This conversation takes place between several of the contributing women on a different topic each day, and the transcript is published to wowOwow.com for users to read and then join in on the conversation. The site promises to soon offer an audio, and later a video, version of the conversation. The contributors also post about a variety of topics, ranging from entertainment and gossip to politics, fashion, or personal stories. At the top of the homepage there are links to horoscopes and “Hair Day Weather” in major international cities, lending a fun, casual, amongst-girlfriends feel to the site alongside the more serious topics. wowOwow also has a “Change the World” forum in the works, which promises to provide a place “for sustainable, life-affirming development,” where women can discuss ways to help themselves and others, with experts as well as the greater wowOwow community.

“wowOwow is a free daily internet website created, run and written by Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Liz Smith, Joni Evans, Mary Wells, Sheila Nevins, Joan Juliet Buck, Whoopi Goldberg, Julia Reed, Joan Ganz Cooney, Judith Martin, Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, and Marlo Thomas…

We also are all of us at a time in our lives when we feel we have much to share in terms of experience and encouragement. And we mean to encourage. We also mean to be frank…

It means a lot to us that the largest number of people coming on to the internet now are women like us – women who, to use a cliché, weren’t born yesterday, who are in their prime, who are involved in the world and have a bent for changing it as much as living in it. Women who want a place to look at issues in a new way, or gossip a little, or learn more about eachother, or ponder how to make the world better. Women who live varied lives, as we do.”

Women over 40 are a growing but fairly underserved demographic on the web, and one that has a lot of buying power that would make this site attractive to advertisers. All of the big-name women involved with this site will certainly give it some immediate attention and credibility.

The design of the site is currently quite lackluster, with a lot of white space and sparse, boring graphics - the advertisements are more attractive than the site. Are aesthetic improvements in the works? Is the women-over-40 market one that will have a lot of interest in social networking and making girlfriends on the web?