Yahoo polishes Shine for the ladies

While sites catering to females are becoming more prevalent on the web, many limit themselves by only playing to certain stereotypes. Yahoo’s new site, Shine, hopes to expand on this narrow thinking with a combination of original content, female bloggers as well as content from popular female publications such as Glamour, InStyle and Cosmopolitan.

As Yahoo summarizes its idea for the site on the Shine About page:

When we started talking about creating a new website for women, we wanted to avoid all of the common categories that advertisers or marketers tend to put us in. We didn’t want to be a site just for moms or just for single women or working women, or any specific demo- or psychographic. We wanted to create a smart, dynamic place for women to gather, get info and to connect with each other and the world around them.

While promising not to resort to the “lose 10 pounds fast” headlines that dominate magazine covers in grocery store checkout isles, Shine is aiming towards the more technically-savvy women who use Yahoo regularly. In fact, as many as 40 million women between the ages of 25 and 54 visit Yahoo every month, according to CNET, which also has a report stating women blog more than men do. The team running the site for Yahoo is entirely female, which is no doubt a smart idea.

Female-targeted sites such as CafeMom have been growing quickly and receiving funding thanks in part to strong partnerships with advertisers (our coverage). Glam is another female-oriented content and ad network that has been making a lot of headlines recently for both its growth and the big money attached to it (our coverage).

With Yahoo’s future still undecided pending the next move by Microsoft in its takeover bid, the company has certainly not stopped rolling out new sites and services. Shine follows the recent launches of Yahoo Buzz (our coverage), Yahoo Live (our coverage) and FireEagle (our coverage) to name a few.