So how did it all begin?
Roger Abrahams, registered the domain name back in 1995, over 10 years ago and a babyworld site has been available on the web continuously since 1996, making us one of the oldest sites of its type in the UK. Roger’s early site provided a place for on-line pioneers to talk about pregnancy and childbirth and came under the wing of Radcliffe Medical Press who provided medical expertise and some early administrative support.
How did you get involved?
In 1998 when it is difficult to remember back to what the web was like just 8 years ago, with no Google, no Freeserve, no lastminute.com! There were only relatively expensive dial-up service providers, no broadband, and only a few percent of UK adults were on-line! There was an insatiable demand for information and reassurance that new, and especially expectant parents require. which is when an early babyworld.co.uk community was born, a community where parents can talk to each other; reliable and up to date advice and information.
What happened next?
With the funds raised,we built a new site from scratch: new design, new content, new community features. We hired paid staff for the first time, many of whom are still with business today, and after 6 months of frantic work launched the new service in April 1999. While we had been concentrating on getting our site up, the on-line world had been changing. Freeserve had been launched and was bringing millions of households on-line. The media was full of stories of the US dot.com gold rush. Only a few months after our launch Freeserve bought the business for £3.7m. Crazy times!
What was Freeserve’s vision?
Babyworld was seen as a building block in a new on-line media empire they were intent on building. Tim Halfhead, who had joined the company a few months before the sale to Freeserve to exploit the commercial potential of the site, took over as Managing Director of babyworld and the launch their iCircle portal. Site traffic continued to grow, but in September 2000 Freeserve brought in-house the previously outsourced e-commerce fulfilment, only to close the e-commerce operation in early 2001. All but one of the original team left as the operations are moved from Oxfordshire to Freeserve’s Clerkenwell head office. Freeserve continued to pay the bills, and kept the membership ticking upwards through the bust years that followed the Internet boom. In 2003, Wandadoo (as Freeserve was now branded), was happy to dispose of their niche media asset, babyworld was reacquired in July 2003.
Did it feel like starting all over again?
We got many of the old team back together both as employees and shareholders, and we had to start again raising finance to redevelop the site. Once again we were working from a borrowed office and looking to re-build our revenues as an independent site. A small fundraising, mainly from staff but also from a handful of outside investors, enabled us to take new premises, back in rural Oxfordshire, and to re-launch the e-commerce service.
Where are we now?
Not really history yet, but in April 2011 the babyworld site was acquired by GlamMedia.com. New and exciting times are ahead and the future of babyworld is secure.
Who is Glam Media?
Glam Media is a comScore Top 10 U.S. Web Property and is #1 in reach for women online, with 94 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. and more than 200 million uniques globally.
With the advent of online search and social networking, consumers are using portals less frequently and are now discovering highly relevant content in mid-tail and niche sites. Glam pioneered a new media model—vertical media— to help premium brands connect with passionate audiences in the fragmented content social landscape that continues to grow online.
By pairing our 2500 publishers worldwide with our own flagship properties, Glam Media boasts 4000+ total authors that create, curate and monetize premium content. With more than 2 million articles, posts and videos, Glam has assembled one of the world’s largest collections of high-quality content.
Our publishing partners are passionate category experts dedicated to their craft. Whether it’s She Finds helping women uncover the hottest deals in fashion, Kristopher Dukes sharing the latest luxury products with aficionados everywhere, or 101 Cookbooks delivering the freshest, healthiest recipes to foodies across the web, Glam’s savvy publishers provide deeply engaging content that audiences crave.
Glam has experienced tremendous growth since launching in 2005 at New York Fashion Week, expanding from a mere 200,000 users in 2005 to 94 million in 2011 and growing.
Glam Media leverages their vertical media model around the world to connect with more than 110 million women and men outside the United States. Advertisers can access this huge audience directly in Asia Pacific (including Japan and South Korea) and Europe (including France, Germany and the United Kingdom).
Updated September 2011
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