Mumsnet
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| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Owner | Mumsnet Limited |
| Slogan(s) | By parents for parents |
| Website | mumsnet.com |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | January 11, 2000 |
| Current status | Online |
Mumsnet is a website for parents in the UK. It hosts discussion forums where users share advice and information on parenting and many other topics. Mumsnet also has a Bloggers Network with 5,000 registered bloggers and a network of 180 local sites run in partnership with local editors.
Mumsnet was the brainchild of Justine Roberts who came up with the idea of a website to help parents pool information and advice following a disastrous first family holiday with her one-year-old twins. Once back in the UK, Roberts persuaded friends Carrie Longton and Steven Cassidy to help her build the site that is now regarded as one of the most influential women's sites in the UK. In November 2009, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, opposition leader David Cameron and many leading ministers took part in live webchats with Mumsnet users.
Mumsnet's 10th birthday party was hosted by Google UK at their London headquarters in March 2010. Guests included Ed Miliband and Steve Hilton, and both the then-Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and his wife Sarah Brown gave speeches. Gordon Brown referred to Mumsnet as one of the great British institutions. In May 2011 Roberts founded Gransnet, a sister site to Mumsnet for the over-50s.
Roberts, CEO, was named in the Media Guardian's 2010 power 100. In February 2013 Roberts and Co-founder, Carrie Longton, were assessed as the 7th most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.
In November 2009 newspaper articles spoke of the forthcoming UK general election as "the Mumsnet election", in part because mothers were regarded by politicians as key floating voters and online forums were seen as arenas in which their votes could be courted. The then prime minister and the leader of the opposition appeared on the website's webchats in quick succession, and this was widely reported. The site faced a barrage of publicity, not all of it favourable. Others have been dismissive of the importance of the site to politicians, suggesting Mumsnet users comprise a relatively narrow demographic. Toby Young argued that the site is full of Guardian readers and "peopled exclusively by university-educated, upper-middle-class women who are only "swing voters" in the sense that they swing between voting Labour, Lib Dem and Green".
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