TeenPeople.com to Merge Into People.com

TeenPeople.com to Merge Into People.com
by Lucia Moses
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.j sp?vnu_content_id=1003570645

Less than a year after its print edition closed, TeenPeople.com will cease to exist as an independent site by the end of the month. Visitors to the teen site will be directed to People’s, which will carry teen-focused stories that are branded as TeenPeople.com. People.com may pick up features unique to the teen site like polls and quizzes.

“We decided to do this because as we look at the activity on People.com, stories about teen-centric celebrities do very well, and we get a nice amount of teen-demo traffic,” said Mark Golin, editor of People.com. The thinking, he said, was, “We’ve got traffic on TeenPeople, People is a larger site, why not combine and have the teen traffic going to one place?”

Asked if the site were doing poorly, he said, “If that were case, we wouldn’t continue to use the brand.” TeenPeople.com will offer advertisers the chance to move their programs to People.com, a spokesperson said.

TeenPeople.com has operated as a standalone site since mid-2006, when Time Inc. folded the print edition of Teen People. Teen People had launched eight years earlier, paving the way for other new teen magazines competing with the established Seventeen, Teen and YM.

The site had 435,000 unique visitors in March 2006, but a year later, it didn't meet minimum sample size standards needed to reliably project audience size, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. It was supported by two full-time staffers and a network of freelancers. One of the full-timers will work for People.com and the other, who worked remotely from Nebraska, will leave the company, the spokesperson said.

Hachette Filipacchi Media’s ElleGirl also folded its print edition last year as the company focuses more attention online. ElleGirl and the U.S. edition of Premiere, which also folded, continue to operate in an online form. Hachette is bullish on ElleGirl. Marta Wohrle, vp, director of digital media, Hachette, said the site is on track to double its revenue in 2007 over the year prior, and has attracted Target and Cover Girl among its new advertisers after it relaunched in October.