Women.com, Hearst to Build Site for Women

Hearst Corp. and Women.com, announced a joint venture Thursday that would create the largest Web site geared to women, joining the growing effort to capture the attention of women online.

Both privately held firms would have a 50% stake in the new company, to be based in San Mateo and called Women.com Networks. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The deal provides Hearst’s HomeArts and Women.com--the second- and third-largest sites targeting women--with many cross-promotional opportunities.

“This makes us the No.1 destination for women on the Web,” said Marleen McDaniel, president and chief executive of the new venture. “It also enables us to build the scale that we need by taking advantage of Hearst’s promotional properties such as television, cable and magazines, which reach 48 million women each month.”

Women make up about 47% of Internet users and are expected to make up half of those online by 2002, according to Jupiter Communications.

Women.com Networks would get a boost from promotion in New York-based Hearst’s 11 magazines, including Redbook, Cosmo and Good Housekeeping, and on its TV and cable ventures, including Lifetime and A&E.;

“The space and ability for offline partners to promote online sites will affect how each does in terms of user growth,” said Anya Sacharow, an analyst at Jupiter Communications.

Women.com Networks would face tough competitors, including iVillage, the largest site targeting women. That site, which recently announced plans to go public, has cross-promotional deals with NBC and Snap.com. Another high-profile player expected to enter the market this year is a series of Web sites designed by Geraldine Laybourne’s closely watched cable TV network, Oxygen Media.

These sites will need to develop content that differentiates them from others, Sacharow said, or they will not draw the traffic they need to bring in ad dollars.

Thursday’s deal melds HomeArts’ focus on lifestyle, home and food with Women.com’s strengths in career, family and health.

There is currently an overlap of about 10% of the content on both sites, McDaniel said.

Hearst’s HomeArts site, astrology site Astronet and its magazine sites would be folded into the venture, eventually featuring a single home page with links to all these partners.