Kara Visits Wowowow!
by Kara Swisher
Posted on March 17, 2008 at 2:46 AM PT
So when I met “60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl when she was interviewing me for the CBS News (CBS) show’s piece on Facebook that aired in January, she told me about a Web site she was working on with a bunch of close women friends in New York.
That site, Wowowow.com–The Women on the Web–is now up and running, aimed at women over 40. The site is designed to be a kind of digital conversation among Stahl and her friends, in the form of blogs, questions, interviews and letters.
Wowowow’s five high-powered founders, each of whom contributed $200,000 to the effort, include: Stahl; well-known book publisher Joni Evans; gossip columnist Liz Smith; ad exec Mary Wells; and political columnist Peggy Noonan.
A lot of the fare is pretty glamorous, given that they have also recruited some flashy regular contributors, including Candice Bergen, Whoopi Goldberg, Judith Martin, Sheila Nevins, Joan Juliet Buck, Lily Tomlin, Marlo Thomas, Julia Reed and Jane Wagner.
The impetus for the site came from Evans, CEO of Wowowow, who had gotten bored with the lack of sites aimed at smart, savvy women like herself and her friends. Although she had spent her career in an analog world, Evans was intrigued by the idea of using digital tools to create a kind of virtual cocktail party.
Topics will range from politics to fashion to relationships and more. The appeal, presumably, is that it is all mixed in with the glamor and celebrity of the partners and contributors.
Eventually, the site will jack up the interactivity, with more contributions from users, and also a social-networking element.
The business plan? Well, advertising, of course. So far, the site has gotten sponsorships from Tiffany (TIF), Sony (SNE) and Citi (C).
Here is a video I made of my visit to Wowowow’s new offices in Manhattan:
