Mamamia celebrates 5 years and launches new website

Mia Freedman Monday 28 May 2012 4:24pm

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Mia and Lana

It’s a big day for us today. Mamamia is 5 years old this month and we are finally ready to announce a major new launch for our company (it still surprises me to type that word because for the first three years we weren’t a company, we were just me sitting in various rooms of my house in my trackies with my laptop balanced on a pillow).

In truth, we weren’t anything resembling a company until my husband Jason came on board two years ago and steered the transformation of Mamamia from a personal blog to the women’s website it is today. I must also say Jason, as Mamamia’s CEO, has been the visionary behind today’s news.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release that went out this morning:

MAMAMIA CELEBRATES 5 YEARS AND LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE

SYDNEY – MAY 28, 2012 – Mamamia, one of Australia’s fastest growing and largest independent women’s websites, today announced the launch of iVillage Australia as part of a long-term strategic partnership with iVillage, the largest online content-driven community for women.

In Nielsen’s online rankings for April, the site was No. 1 in Australian audience numbers in the lifestyle and family category.

This deal further expands iVillage’s international presence following last year’s successful launch of iVillage Canada with Rogers Media. iVillage.com.au will launch in June 2012 with an existing base of 367,000 Australian unique browsers.

The partnership is the perfect e-marriage which brings together the most engaged powerful female voices online – Mamamia and iVillage.

Mamamia will benefit from NBC’s extraordinary knowledge and resources, and iVillage.com.au will benefit from Mamamia’s internationally benchmarked social media skills as the industry leader in reader engagement and social media.

iVillage.com.au will feature unique editorial content written by and for Australian women, supplemented by the rich editorial assets for which the US-based iVillage is known internationally.

iVillage.com.au will be edited locally by Mamamia’s former Managing Editor, Lana Hirschowitz.

ABOUT iVILLAGE:

iVillage is the largest content-driven community for women online. Every day, women come to iVillage to connect, share advice, find life tools and engage in conversations that matter most to them in the areas of Pregnancy & Parenting, Health, Food, Entertainment and Beauty & Style. Additional businesses and brand extensions within iVillage include iVillage UK, Petside.com, Dinnertool.com, LifeGoesStrong.com, Astrology.com and GardenWeb.com. Based in New York City, iVillage Inc. is part of the NBCUniversal Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media Group, which has a digital portfolio of brands that reaches 60 million plus monthly uniques.

Join iVillage’s Facebook page here.

 

iVillage.com already has a big Australian audience of 367,000 UBs per month, making it the only other independent women’s website (along with Mamamia.com.au) in the top 10 women’s websites in Australia.

Noticing this and keen to expand our company, we approached iVillage to see about possibly selling the Australian advertising for their site. By some wonderful act of kismet, they were in the final stages of planning a trip down here to look at choosing an Australian partner with whom to launch ivillage in Australia.

When they were here, they were actively and enthusiastically courted by all the major media companies in the country. And us. We were their last meeting that week and they arrived at our office fairly downcast, having not found the right partner. In scenes not dissimilar to the part in Cinderella where the prince tries the glass slipper on the most unlikely candidate AND IT FITS, we hit it off immediately.

And so finally today, Mamamia is ecstatic to announce the launch of iVillage Australia as part of a long term strategic partnership with iVillage.

iVillage is everything that women want to talk about, it complements Mamamia and adds a warm, nurturing community to many of the issues that women discuss everyday.

iVillage Australia will offer  unique editorial content written by and for Australian women, supplemented by the rich editorial assets for which the US-based iVillage is known internationally.

And so how does this affect Mamamia? It doesn’t.

Nothing around here will change a jot. You won’t notice a thing.

With the exception of some staff changes that will be very much behind the scenes.

Mamamia’s Managing Editor Lana Hirschowitz moves into the role of Editor at iVillage.com.au.  Writer Nicky Champ will be moving across as Lana’s deputy editor. I will continue to be Editor/Publisher here at Mamamia as well as Publisher of  iVillage.com.au.

The iVillage and Mamamia teams will all be based in the same office but will not share content or editorial staff (apart from my dual role).

We are due to launch really soon and want you to be the first to check it out – so like us on Facebook here so we can keep you posted.

And congratulations to Lana who has helped me steer Mamamia.com.au to this point over the last few years and will now be moving on to edit iVillage in an awesome and well-deserved promotion. A safer, more capable and skilled  pair of hands I could not imagine… exciting times!

I will be announcing a new Managing Editor for Mamamia soon. Stay tunes