It’s not because my name is Caroline, but I was very much attracted to the DivineCaroline.com site that’s newly out. I thought, finally, with a name like that, someone has come out with a great site for women!
And yes, it’s quite impressive. As of this writing, I do not know much about who’s behind the content-rich online destination .
The About page does not talk about anything else than the DivineCaroline team. The terms and conditions mention a REAL GIRLS MEDIA NETWORK, INC organization. Could this be an independent effort? No P&G nor L’Oreal hiding in the back there? Hmmm…
What the site does, for a change, and does quite well, is cover all the aspects of a woman’s life. Not just fashion, not just parenting, not just work, not just hobbies: ALL OF THEM, I tell you. So you mean we’re not just either mothers, or career women, or dolls that need to be dressed up? No, we’re not each separately, we’re all of those people at once. The same way men can be professionals, investors, sports fanatics AND parents.
The site, as mentioned before, and this is novel these days, is not a social network. It truly offers strong editorial content, and a lot of it, but also smartly integrates a little 2.0 here and there. Members can submit reviews on anything they wish. In their own words: ‘ If you’ve got an opinion about anything from a salad dressing to a Caribbean resort, we want to hear it.’ The reviews are actually mainly from writers, either journalists or book authors, ensuring a certain level of quality.
It also includes podcasts that elegantly start at the touch of a play button about se**ual relations**ips and dating. (These are not spelled out to keep the jerks at bay). The Web 2.0 style comes from the ‘ Four fairly unqualified relationship experts’ who discuss issues around sex and dating: 2 women and 2 men, two of them straight, two of them gay or lesbian.
Seems like there could be ‘ real girls ‘ behind this unique online presence, because their user agreement is short and sweet, easy to read ( in a scroll down window on the sign up form, not on a PDF attachment or on another page as in most cases), and starts with the following sentence: ‘DivineCaroline does not claim ownership of anything you write or submit.’
Now as clear goes, that seems clear to me…
Another congrats as to the tone of the site. I love the paragraph, shown above, next to where a visitor enters their user name. I hate those senseless user names too! That’s why on Frenchparents ( and the soon to come InternationalParents), we designate members by their first name and last name initial.
Bravo girls! It’s very hard to leave your site!
