All Things Digital

Yesterday, BoomTown was hanging in Hollywood at ContentNext’s EconCeleb’s conference, where I did an onstage interview with legendary editor Bonnie Fuller about the massive impact of the Internet on celebrity journalism.

With its instant ability to deliver news, video and more, sites like TMZ, PerezHilton, The Superficial and Yahoo’s (YHOO) omg! have become massive drivers of traffic on the Internet and–despite the saturation–the arena is still growing fast, especially among women users.

But for those not in the know about Fuller’s impact on how celebrity journalism has developed to its current power, she is the reason–more than any other modern editor–humanity now knows every move made by the unholy trio of Paris, Lindsay and, most of all, Britney.

As founding editor of US Weekly (with stints at Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and other mags), and as the editorial director of the parent company of Star magazine, Fuller’s various editorial innovations–celebrities are just like us!–are now commonplace.

And like a lot of old media stars, Fuller is now working on her own new celeb-focused digital and media company, which she says is aimed at women 20 to 40 years old, plunging headlong into the Web arena.

Here’s my video interview with her in an alcove of the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, where we discuss what she is up to and where online celebrity coverage is going (Britney 24-7!):

Recently, Julie Wainwright came to visit AllThingsD HQ (also known as BoomTown’s abode) to talk about her newest venture.

Wainwright, as many recall, was the former CEO of Web 1.0’s most memorable flameout–Pets.com.

While a lot of the attention it garnered was probably undeserved–after all, Pets.com was no worse than a lot of goofy start-ups out there, except for its irksome sock puppet mascot–Wainwright will forever be linked with the failed e-commerce company.

Nonetheless, the longtime Web exec–before Pets.com, she was CEO of Berkeley Systems and also Reel.com–has just launched SmartNow.com.

The site is a far cry from shipping bags of kibble–aimed at women 35 to 55 and using Web 2.0 features and lots of video to deliver information on health issues, self-improvement, spirituality, nutrition, fitness and a range of other topics.

SmartNow uses experts–such as doctors, dieticians, diet coaches, inspirational writers, psychologists, fashion and beauty professionals, and even humorists–as well as letting users and women’s groups deliver personal stories.

That includes, for example, Melissa Bates, who tells of her bout with breast cancer in a gripping video.

The 51-year-old Wainwright got the inspiration for the site from her own personal efforts and challenges–including shutting down Pets.com and struggling through a divorce right after that.

While looking for helpful info, she noticed that there were few sites aimed at women like her, so she decided to start one. Self-funded, Wainwright says she is now talking to some angel investors.

Here’s Wainwright talking about her new start-up:

As BoomTown argued yesterday in a piece on the landscape of Yahoo if Microsoft completes its purchase of the Internet portal, Yahoo (YHOO) certainly knows how to make online content.

As we wrote: “For all its history, right down to today, even with all these dumb widgets competing for users’ attention, Yahoo continues to natively understand how to to entertain, inform and serve up their own and others content to consumers.”

Case in point, an attractive new site it launched today called Shine, which is aimed at women from their mid-20s to their mid-50s.

As you can see from the image below, it is a very well-done site, incorporating a lot of the good stuff in the same genre from around the Web.

Does it look a bit like the sassy properties of Sugar Inc.? Is it light and frothy like Glam Media? Does it feel a bit like DailyCandy, in its focus on the shopping as a sport? And, is it as helpful as iVillage (and does it even “borrow” a wiggly “i”)?

Yes indeedy to all!

Imitation is a form of flattery, I suppose, although Yahoo’s site feels fresher than any out there and it has an aspirational and hip feel that women will like, I think.

I’d call it an Eat-Pray-Love mood, with a lot of Oprah mixed in.

More importantly, it is clearly a good market for Yahoo’s advertisers, who all aim to reach this high-spending but underserved demographic online.

Yahoo is trying to reinvigorate its lackluster efforts here, as well as making plans to further drill down into related topics like parenting, sex, food and wellness that are present on the Shine site now.

While it looks a lot like a blog plus, Shine obviously has social written all over it and a wide range of communications tools will be easy to layer over the service.

It also is smart in its partnering with lots of media companies like Hearst and in pointing across the Web to give users a more comprehensive offering.

But can Yahoo compete in a very crowded field with such a late entrant? Probably. It recently put up a celebrity site called OMG, which has grabbed significant traffic quickly.

And while we honestly could care less if men look bad in skinny jeans (um, yes!), there is probably something on the very-full page of interest to everyone.

The Shine site has Brandon Holley as its editor-in-chief, but the effort in the arena is being helmed by Amy Iorio, who is the VP/GM of Yahoo’s Lifestyles unit. It all rolls up under Yahoo Media SVP Scott Moore.

While Yahoo PR will probably blah-blah too much about “starting points,” which is the latest buzz word from top brass, related to Shine, it should just hush up and realize Yahoo’s many owned-and-operated media conglomerations just need decent support and promotion to stay as strong as they are and to keep them as one of the bright spots at the company.

Here’s a screen shot of the site (click on the image once to make it appear on another page and then again to make it larger):

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:

When we first heard Heidi Roizen, a well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was launching a start-up, BoomTown was intrigued. But, after finding out it was aimed at motivating women to lose weight by listening to songs penned by Roizen herself, we did not have to be told twice to fire up the video camera for a little chat with her.

In any many ways, this drastically different career move by Roizen (pictured here)–who was most recently a partner at Mobius Venture Capital, which recently decided not to raise another fund–makes perfect sense.

VCs are always looking for entrepreneurs with passion to invest in and Roizen had a lot of passion, as it turns out, for filling a need in a potentially lucrative marketplace by penning songs herself.

The switch from investor to songwriter came, the 49-year-old Roizen said, when she wanted to lose weight and could not find decent songs to give herself a better frame of mind to shed pounds. Most of what was out there, she said, was either badly made or flat-out depressing.

So, she decided to create something very different with a whole 10-song CD called “SkinnySongs.”

That meant more upbeat ditties that Roizen–who has also been an Apple exec and a software entrepreneur–wrote, with titles like “Skinny Jeans” and, yes, “I’m a Hottie Now.”

Before all of BoomTown’s male readers run for the hills, let me say I was also dubious about the songs. But after listening to them, I found I actually liked several of them, especially because Roizen decided to use obviously top-notch producers and singers.

While she is operating out of her home in Atherton, Calif., and funding the venture herself (to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars), Roizen found producer George Daly and then well-known Nashville music producer and songwriter David Malloy to aid her in translating her lyrics into songs.

The genre of the songs ranges from hip-hop to rock to country, such as the catchy “Objects in the Mirror,” which could easily be mistaken for a boot-kicking number sung by, say, Reba McEntire (whom Malloy has worked with).

Now, it will be like most start-ups–about getting your product used by consumers. In this case, that would be women struggling to stay fit as they get older, like Roizen herself, which she thinks is a big market.

While the CD costs about $15 on Amazon and can also be downloaded on iTunes, Roizen hopes to branch out with the concept if it catches on.

You can listen to the music or read the lyrics here.

And here’s a video chat with Roizen at her home about “SkinnySongs” and also the VC business:

And on the seventh day, at least we did not get another lump of Sugar.

After a year of manic site creation, Brian Sugar actually bought his first company, rather than extend his name further in the online women-focused arena.

Yesterday, Sugar’s San Francisco-based Sugar Publishing–which includes the flagship PopSugar (celebs), GeekSugar (tech), CasaSugar (home), YumSugar (food), well, we could go on but won’t for fear of lapsing into a diabetic coma–changed its name to Sugar Inc. and also acquired ShopStyle.com.

The all-equity deal for the Los Altos, Calif.-based social-shopping site will give Sugar a nice bit of technology to play in the Web commerce space more aggressively, with features that allow the quick creation of shopping widgets using products grabbed from all over the Internet.

Think of a digital version of one of those massive kitten-heel shoe spreads in Lucky magazine that also allows you to instantly buy stuff you see and you’ve got the right idea.

We sat down with the jumpy (really, he is) Brian Sugar and made a video interview recently, after noticing the tear he and his wife Lisa have been on since they founded their mini-empire last year.

Their activity has caused notice–last year, Yahoo almost bought the network of sites. The Sugars were probably glad they missed that bullet now, as their sites seem to be growing faster without a big partner.

The start-up is backed by Sequoia Capital and also NBC Universal, which have both sunk $15 million in total into the company, which uses a unique cross-pollinating style to grow its audience to about 5 million unique visitors a month.

NBC, via its iVillage subsidiary, sells the Sugar Network’s ads in a guaranteed deal for the company.

While it is a crowded space in all of Sugar’s subsidiaries, it’s also nice to see a sassy effort from the Sugars, who use a sweeter (sorry!) approach to coverage–some might call it saccharine (sorry again!) even–in the blog genre.

In other words, Lindsay Lohan is still a drunken, drug-addled mess, but don’t those super white nails look amazing!!!

The new buy is in keeping with Brian Sugar’s background of online commerce (top stints at J. Crew online and also Kmart’s ill-conceived BlueLight.com) and give Sugar sites another tool in an interesting arsenal.

“We’re aimed at an ADD culture,” said Sugar to me yesterday, and he is not kidding.

Each of his more than a dozen sites–yes, there is also a social network called TeamSugar, as well as a tagging site called, yep, Sugarlicio.us–has from 15 to 25 posts a day, with the user-generated content numbering upward of 15,000 items.

It all makes us feel like we’ve gained five pounds by just lingering on the sites. (Sorry once again, but these sugar puns are hard to resist!).

See Sugar in action: