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What nerve: Babble,
for the new parent


Coming from Rufus Griscom, founder of Nerve

Dec 12, 2006

It's been a tough couple of years already for parent magazines, with the once-sleepy print category seeing more and more readers drifting over the internet, and advertisers following.

They last thing they need is Rufus Griscom. Perhaps more to the point, the last thing they would have any reason to expect is Rufus Griscom.

That name may not ring that many bells these days, but back before the internet meltdown Griscom was quite the talk. He is recognized as one of the true early innovators on the internet as the founder of the racy Nerve.com, a site dedicated to what he preferred to term educated smut.

His aim then was to revolutionize porn, soften it, make it prettier, capture the intelligence of it through gorgeous pictures and well-crafted storytelling, make it so that even women would come to visit and stay. He did, and they did.

Now, with Nerve well established, Griscom aims to revolutionize the parenting category with a new web site, called Babble.com, aimed at hip, urbanite parents. Babble.com launches today.

Let it be noted that Griscom is himself a new dad, which explains part of his interest. But he's also driven by the belief that the traditional print titles are ho-hum, plain-vanilla excuses for magazines. Griscom calls it a big ocean of pink and powdered blue.

"We were just amazed by the fact that the experience of being a parent is such a crucible experience, it is such an intense, challenging and extraordinary experience,” Griscom tells Media Life.

“But you get no sense of that in any of the parenting magazines or the web sites we have seen. It is presented as an interior decorating challenge or a cute cuddly experience by the industry at large.”

In Babble.com the aim is to offer parents a more intelligent and sophisticated experience, as well as humor, even irony, which you don't get much of in the traditional titles. Parents are certainly caregivers, but they are also adults, and Babble.com will address them as such.

To that end, Griscom is hiring on a slew of top writers and bloggers, including Greg Allen (Daddytypes) and Rebecca Woolf (GirlsGoneChild). In addition to articles, Babble.com will have an information center and columns, such as “Bad Parent” and “Notes from a Non-Breeder.” Babble.com will open discussions of controversial topics via personal essays.

Visitors will post video content and participate in the community, posting profiles, chatting and sharing photos.

Griscom hopes to attract as many as a couple of million visitors a month to Babble, but he allows that half a million wouldn’t be a bad start  He sees his nearest competitors as Babycenter.com and UrbanBaby.com. He's launching with four advertisers and says Babble will be in the black within six months.

“From where I sit, I think that this will be a moderate success and cash flow neutral- positive, pretty much out of the gate,” says Griscom. “The real question is, can it be a large success? That I think we will find out over the next few years.”

Griscom was first in the headlines a decade ago when he co-founded Nerve.com, and while the site hasn't gotten nearly so much press in recent years, he says he now generates significant profits, enough to fund the half-a-million-dollar start up costs of Babble.com.

Despite its content, or really because of it, Nerve has attracted an upmarket demographic--it claims that some 35 percent of its audience has graduate degrees--and a surprisingly high share of women, some 40 percent of its visitors, says Griscom.

And if he can attract women to Nerve, he reasons he'll certainly be able to attract men to Babble.com.

Others are not so sure.

“In spite of their intentions, I suspect they will attract mostly women,” says Martin S. Walker, chairman of Walker Communications, a magazine publishing consultancy. Walker observes that in magazines, audiences tend to break down as women or men, with little mixing. The main exception is news. 

But Griscom does stand a chance to shake up the parenting category.

“I don’t think any of the current parenting magazines have really captured the audience with any high degree of loyalty,” says Peter Kreisky, chairman of Kreisky Media Consultancy, who says maybe this might leave the door open for Babble to follow the example set by The Knot, the wedding site that has become No. 1 in its category.

But it will be a competitive race. Even with the internet, the parenting category has seen two new print titles, Conde Nast’s Cookie and Disney’s Wondertime, and both are gaining ad pages even as the category overall was down in November and flat for year.

Further, the existing titles are all busy building up their own internet presences. Ultimately, it may come down to who has the deeper insight into what parents really want, the old-hand publishers and editors or the new dad and purveyor of erotica.

Meanwhile, in online ratings for the week ended Dec. 3, the top five parent companies were Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Time Warner and News Corp. The top five brands were Yahoo, Google, MSN/Windows Live, Microsoft and AOL.

Gus Plc was the top advertiser with 8.13 million impressions, followed by NexTag at 4.71 million, Reunion.com at 2.44 million, Bank of America at 1.60 and Time Warner at 1.59 million.

Sessions per person soared 14.29 percent to reach 16, while domains visited per person also rose 14.29 percent to 40 coming off of a slow Thanksgiving week. PC time per person for the week was 16 hours, 44 minutes and 19 seconds.

 

Top 25 parent companies
Through Dec. 3

#

Parent

Unique Audience (000)

 Reach %

Time Spent per Person (hh:mm:ss)

1

Microsoft

84,272

61.5

0:43:24

2

Yahoo!

76,404

55.8

1:08:00

3

Google

73,322

53.5

0:25:17

4

Time Warner

69,065

50.4

1:36:22

5

News Corp. Online

38,961

28.4

0:42:44

6

eBay

38,700

28.2

0:50:56

7

InterActiveCorp

29,679

21.7

0:13:50

8

Amazon

27,063

19.8

0:19:14

9

Walt Disney Internet Group

21,894

16.0

0:16:10

10

Landmark Communications

20,159

14.7

0:22:06

11

RealNetworks, Inc.

18,958

13.8

0:19:13

12

Apple Computer

18,544

13.5

0:34:26

13

New York Times Company

16,981

12.4

0:11:26

14

Wal-Mart Stores

16,827

12.3

0:10:19

15

Wikipedia

15,076

11.0

0:10:37

16

E.W. Scripps Company

13,964

10.2

0:05:57

17

Verizon Communications

13,911

10.2

0:14:31

18

YouTube

13,817

10.1

0:20:46

19

United Online

13,033

9.5

0:33:16

20

CNET Networks

12,509

9.1

0:07:17

21

Target Corp.

12,384

9.0

0:09:22

22

Bank of America

11,867

8.7

0:27:34

23

CBS Corporation

11,754

8.6

0:13:59

24

Viacom Digital

11,703

8.5

0:32:51

25

AT&T Inc.

11,585

8.5

0:15:20

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

 

Top 25 brands
Through Dec. 3

 

Parent

Unique Audience (000)

Reach %

Time spent per person (hh:mm:ss)

1

Yahoo!

76,146

55.6

1:07:58

2

Google

71,796

52.4

0:24:58

3

MSN/Windows Live

64,871

47.3

0:40:06

4

Microsoft

55,267

40.3

0:19:03

5

AOL

50,085

36.5

2:00:14

6

eBay

34,223

25.0

0:51:55

7

Fox Interactive Media

33,060

24.1

0:47:13

8

Amazon

23,563

17.2

0:20:05

9

Weather Channel

19,142

14.0

0:22:54

10

Real Network

18,958

13.8

0:19:13

11

Apple

18,544

13.5

0:34:26

12

Ask Search Network

18,387

13.4

0:13:27

13

Wal-Mart Stores

15,259

11.1

0:09:59

14

MapQuest

15,082

11.0

0:07:34

15

Wikipedia

15,025

11.0

0:10:36

16

YouTube

13,817

10.1

0:20:46

17

Target

12,102

8.8

0:09:25

18

About.com

11,549

8.4

0:03:23

19

CNN

11,463

8.4

0:17:57

20

Bank of America

11,287

8.2

0:27:49

21

Blogger

10,337

7.5

0:05:15

22

PayPal

9,331

6.8

0:12:57

23

Disney Online

9,066

6.6

0:17:40

24

Comcast

8,860

6.5

0:28:53

25

Shopzilla.com Network

8,349

6.1

0:02:50

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

 

Top 25 advertisers 
(excludes house ads)
Through Dec. 3

#

Company

Impressions (000)

1

GUS Plc

8,134,462

2

NexTag, Inc.

4,712,466

3

Reunion.com L.L.C.

2,439,493

4

Bank of America Corporation

1,600,626

5

Time Warner Inc.

1,589,684

6

InterActiveCorp

1,564,818

7

Vonage Holdings Corp

1,564,761

8

SBC Communications, Inc.

1,437,572

9

eBay, Inc.

1,296,789

10

Blockbuster Inc.

1,235,680

11

HSBC Holdings plc

1,206,763

12

Netflix, Inc.

1,159,397

13

Verizon Communications, Inc.

1,097,122

14

BellSouth Corporation

1,041,774

15

Monster Worldwide, Inc.

881,239

16

Low Rate Source

839,179

17

United Online, Inc.

815,675

18

E*TRADE FINANCIAL Corp.

533,739

19

Ford Motor Company

450,062

20

Sprint Corporation

392,848

21

American Express Company

358,079

22

GUS Plc

8,134,462

23

NexTag, Inc.

4,712,466

24

Reunion.com L.L.C.

2,439,493

25

Bank of America Corporation

1,600,626

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance

 

Top 25 advertising sites
(excludes house ads)
Through Dec. 3

 

Company

Impressions (000)

1

Yahoo!

25,841,029

2

MySpace

8,329,120

3

MSN

4,096,893

4

The Weather Channel

2,537,476

5

eBay

1,538,883

6

AOL.com

1,019,938

7

YouTube

669,947

8

New York Times

640,302

9

FOXNEWS.COM

636,733

10

IMDb

397,111

11

Comcast.net

364,597

12

Juno

354,636

13

The Weather Underground

304,160

14

CNN

292,294

15

Excite

287,979

16

iWon

287,595

17

CBS SportsLine

285,095

18

NetZero

257,607

19

EarthLink

242,266

20

Classmates

239,200

21

ESPN.com

234,385

22

Pogo

207,556

23

Drudge Report

173,376

24

SmartMoney

168,217

25

MSNBC

168,198

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance

 

Average use
Through Dec. 3

 

Current Week

Last Week

% Change

Sessions/Visits per Person

16

14

14.29

Domains Visited per Person

40

35

14.29

PC Time per Person

16:44:19

14:02:40

19.18

Active Digital Media Universe

137,058,418

137,945,138

-0.64

Current Digital Media Universe Estimate

212,606,103

212,599,086

0

Source: Nielsen//Net Ratings AdRelevance

 



Heidi Dawley is a staff writer for Media Life.




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