Meredith Corporation – set to launch parenthood portal

Thanks Bubbles for the post about this blog I also picked up from Bubbles’ blog, that Meredith Corporation is shutting down its “Child” magazine and looking to launch a parenthood portal this coming July (source: paidcontent.org). It appears to be the first real indicator that traditional media companies are making dramatic shifts in strategy, closing a print magazine and focusing their efforts online. The movement towards Family 2.0 solutions by Meredith is also apparent with their Better Homes and Garden portal bhg.com adding interactive features, such as…

“The new BHG.com contains seven primary channels — Decorating, Remodeling, Food & Recipes, Gardening, Holidays, Health, and Family & Crafts. The channels include features such as streaming video and blogs; design and planning tools; desktop widgets; recipe wikis; and community sharing applications.” Meredith Press Release

The strategy shift will also see 60 employees lose their jobs who mainly worked on “Child” magazine. Meredith’s bhg.com (Better Homes and Garden) site receives over 5 million unique monthly visitors. I am assuming that Meredith’s parenthood portal will have all the bells and whistles of a Family 2.0 site.

Meredith has over 85 million names is one of the largest US domestic database, 26 subscription magazines, 400 books in print, 32 websites and strategic alliances, 14 television stations…

“Meredith Hispanic Ventures publishes five Spanish-language titles, making Meredith the largest Hispanic publisher in the United States reaching women at every life stage.” Meredith Press

More importantly, Meredith’s website properties generate 110 million page views a month.

As we have seen ivillage, Disney and now Meredith Corporation, Family 2.0 is becoming more of a necessity than a fun nice to have tool.

Stay tuned for the Meredith parenthood portal…

ps* I am typing this at Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco

tags: web2expo, meredith, family20