This week’s elevator pitch comes from HerHotSpot.com, an online community for Gen Y women to share stories, ask questions, and get advice on life, love, fashion, work and health. While the name is regrettable, the pitch by founder Brette Borow is well articulated and she does a good job of getting her points across. Launched last year, HerHotSpot is trying to merge the social features of Twitter and Facebook with the content that magazines like Glamour or Cosmopolitan provide.
The site itself is geared towards several major issues in a Gen Y woman’s life—health, style, love, post-college life, work and pop culture. Part commentary from professional writers and part user-generated content, the site allows readers to post their own content and, like with Twitter, readers can follow other participants. Users can post video content as well. HerHotSpot is trying to be a content network as well as a social network, creating one big online forum that looks similar to the Sugar Network’s PopSugar. Instead of reinventing the social network wheel, HerHotSpot is hoping to get an influx of members by integrating with Facebook Connect.
HerHotSpot has an interesting concept around providing hyper-targeted content built on top of a social network. And the content seems to be catchy, from “A Girl’s Guide to Twitter,” to “Recession Friendly Luxury Shopping.” But I think in order to gain loyal followers, HerHotSpot needs to provide more valuable content. Right now, the site leans too heavily towards the user-generated stuff. Perhaps a fifty-fifty breakdown between forum and original editorial content would be ideal. And forums can be spun off of editorial content as well.
Tell us what you think. Try to keep the comments clean. We know it’s hard. But try.