10e20 Blog

Sk*rt is a new social networking site that that has recently launched. To put it simply, it is like Digg for women. I found out about it through a blog I read regularly.

When the announcement was posted I went over to check it out right away. I understand the importance of Digg but I have to admit that the stories on there aren’t really my cup of tea.

The first thing I noticed is that there is no way to bury a story or push it down. Long-term (or more like short-term), I think this is going to have to be implemented especially once the site gets more popular and the people try to “game” it. I noticed today a few comments where people questioned the validity of something, but there was no way other than in the comments section to flag it.

The site is well designed and welcoming. It looks similar to Digg but the style is more appealing. It’s one of the better implementations of Pligg that I’ve seen. There are stories like “When Parenting Styles Sour Friendships”, “The 6 Myths of Creativity”, “10 Things you should never say to your body”. These stories are much more my style.

One of the tag lines they have going is: “Sk*rt. Just like that friend who always finds the best stuff. Only better.” They seem to be living up to that.

So how is the site doing?

On the first day of launching, Sk*rt made it to the homepage of Digg and experienced the “Digg Effect” first hand. (Weird right? Kind of like looking at a picture of yourself holding a picture of yourself, holding a picture of yourself…..you get the idea.)

At the time of writing this, Yahoo is showing 522 links to Sk*rt. Technorati is showing 343 – many of these are from high PR, authority sites. Which means that they have been good at getting the word out about the new site and helping it to spread virally.

They are running a contest for bloggers and site owners to be automatically entered into a drawing for $500 worth of products, simply for putting a badge and a link to Sk*rt on their site. The prizes are totally targeted towards women. There are aprons, tablecloths, necklaces, personalized stationery, all things that their audience would find more appealing than say, the typical “Nintendo Wii” in the usual giveaways.

Sk*rt appears to have exceeded the founders expectations since they’ve had to move to a new host within the first week (next time don’t choose a starter account at BlueHost ). The site has been going down periodically since the launch.

Verdict on this so far is that this site is great if you are going for a niche audience or looking to get the word out about your site to early adopters. As a user and a member of their target audience I think the content is compelling, and I’ve already spent significant time on the site. I welcome a new site into the social bookmarking space that is targeting the female audience. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

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Posted by Danielle Winfield at 12:09 pm
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