AOL Launches Women's Channel
America Online Inc. announced the launch of a new Women's Channel Tuesday and a major agreement with a new company founded by Geraldine Laybourne to be its cornerstone. Laybourne left Disney Online two months ago to open her own business, Oxygen Media.
As part of the deal announced Tuesday, AOL (AOL) is transferring three of its existing women's online sites to Laybourne's company, which she will develop and supplement in building the AOL Women's Channel. The online service is also taking a minority equity stake in Oxygen.
"What we have to offer is a desire to try and help modern women," Laybourne told CBS.Marketwatch.com. "The major media today - newspapers and magazines - stereotype women and picture them as interested only in how to thin their thighs or sensational talk shows. But woman have varied interests and, on the Internet, we can have a area devoted to all sorts of them: a site for women thinking about getting divorced, for instance."
Laybourne declined to hint at new content ideas she will develop for the AOL channel, saying only "A lot of what I see online comes out of a print world. I have a graphical, visual mind, and I'm a passionate information architect at heart."
She said she expects her first content efforts will be seen in a few months. Meanwhile, the Women's Channel will continue to feature content partners including Hearst HomeArts and the women-focused community venture, iVillage.
Laybourne welcomed the presence of these publishers which might be considered competitors. "My feeling is that women are so under-served by the media in general that the more people focusing on them the better," she said.
The decision to partner with AOL was logical, she offered. "AOL has a leg up over everyone, and for us to enter a new medium, we wanted a strong partnership with a company which has experience with, and access to, the largest number of women possible."
America Online said women now make up 51 percent of its users. AOL chairman Steve Case called the growth of female users "one of the most important trends we have seen this year. Women are an important component of our rapid growth and our emergence as a mass market medium."
Laybourne said AOL wasn't the only outlet with whom she talked, since leaving Disney Online. "On my last day there, I had 34 telephone calls from companies and investment bankers interested in talking," she recalled.
Written By Frank Barnako