Last month, after AOL’s (NYSE: TWX) stealth work on an edgy women’s lifestyle site, one of our readers pointed us to TheFrisky.com as a beta version of the site AOL was working on. Wrong Time Warner family. Maybe TBS, with syndication rights to shows like Sex And The City? No. Turns out TheFrisky, unveiled in mid-March and unlabeled save for the privacy policy, belongs to the New Products group of Time Warner sib Turner Broadcasting — producing buzz for itself amid the obscurity of its parentage. More after the jump.
For the moment, that’s how Turner likes it. Although conceived by the New Products group as a one-off beta to coincide with the release of Sex And The City the movie, TheFrisky is enjoying the freedom of not being tied down to any of the properties in the Time Warner family. Kind of like online dating, TheFrisky (tagline: “a daily romp on the sexy side”) is talking with other similarly focused sites, like Yahoo’s Shine and StyleHive, about sharing its news, commentary and videos — but right now, it’s all casual, nothing serious. I spoke with Guhan Selvaretnam, New Products’ group lead, and Lea Ann Leming, the New Products group managing editor, about their plans for the site and sudden appearance of a number of new sites for women.
– Sex and the single women’s site: Taking inspiration from Sex And The City, which was produced by Time Warner siblings HBO and New Line Cinema, TheFrisky’s connection to the movie is decidedly downplayed. The goal isn’t to serve as an online vehicle for the film – or any Turner programming either, for that matter, said Selvaretnam. That said, Turner’s popularity with women in general provided enough of an impetus for the company to create a standalone site. Selvaretnam: “We launched in beta in mid-March and it will remain in that state for a while. The underlying rationale, was actually a sales rationale initially, where we were looking at creating cross-platform, integrated sales opportunities. We found that many of Turner
Thanks for confirming a suspicion. When I received the following impersonal email the other day from The Frisky, I wondered how such a new site could already be behaving in such a spammy manner. Answer: their used to impersonal corporate ways:
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Hi there,
I'm part of The Frisky webzine team and we just posted a slide show of the new Rogan line that will launch at Target this weekend. Plaid certainly is the new black this summer.
Here's the link to check it out – http://www.thefrisky.com/tag/heidi+montag – let us know if you link to it.
Hope all is well!
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No sense getting mean spirited so I left of the name of the "marketing professional" who "reached out" to us. Sad.
Sorry Mike, but that WAS pretty mean-spirited. Not to mention sloppy:
they're used to, not their used to. And since we all know you are Michael J. Pratt (is pratt a pseudonym?), that marketing professional may not be liking you very much today either. Sad.