IVillage
 |
|
| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Owner |
NBCUniversal (Comcast) |
| Created by | Candice Carpenter, Nancy Evans, Robert Levitan, and Tina Sharkey |
| Website | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched | 1995 |
| Current status | Defunct |
iVillage, Inc. was a media company whose mission was to humanize cyberspace. It brought women on online, created a distinct community, brought blue chip advertisers online for the first time, created what is now called native advertising, used the power of the internet for social and political action, created early programming modules, made the virtual real and was an early ecommerce pioneer.
iVillage is now owned by NBCUniversal. It was shut down October 31, 2014, and now the iVillage domain redirects to Today's website.
It all began with a name. In 1995, the company was established in New York City by Candice Carpenter (who became Candice Carpenter Olson in 2002 when she married Random House Chairman and CEO Peter Olson), along with co-founders Nancy Evans, and Robert Levitan They wanted a name that would act as a beacon of community and safety in the overwhelming landscape of the internet. After settling on Village, they added an "i" (this was before the iPhone came out in 2007) to signal that it was online. They also used a set of principals created by Robert M. Greenberg (CEO of R/GA Digital Studios) crafted around the letter "i" as a touchstone of influence:
THE IMPORTANT OF THE LETTER "I"
Goal of New Media is to connect ideas with individuals.
This must be accomplished using the letter "i".
INDIVIDUALS -->
<-- IDEAS
When iVillage started, AOL was the primary gateway for the "normal" user. They convinced AOL to allow them to also create their sites on the web. Josh Bernoff, senior analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts stated "If AOL is funding something {iVillage} that's also available on the Web, that shows they realize people in the long term will want to get their information there [...] I haven't heard of any other [commercial services] who have worked so hard on this."
iVillage pioneered a revolution in humanizing cyberspace and bringing women online. In 1993, it was estimated that only 5 percent of the internet's users were women, but 5 years later the figure was nearly 50 percent. They transitioned from tech for tech's sake to what tech could actually do. "'When we started iVillage, fun and games and surfing were key activities on the web,’ Nancy Evans, the editor in chief, explains in an open letter to her site’s visitors. ‘Today, using the Internet to help with real life has taken over the No. 1 spot. Not that we don’t like fun; but let’s face it, we women are practical.” Evans was ahead of the curve, and Microsoft followed her lead, taking note of a market that was expected to grow from 45 million in 1999 to 65 million in 2002.
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