“Sugar Inc. Enters Local Editorial and Advertising ... - PR Inside” plus 1 more |
| Sugar Inc. Enters Local Editorial and Advertising ... - PR Inside Posted: 08 Jun 2010 05:13 AM PDT 2010-06-08 14:15:11 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 06/08/10 -- In its first foray into providing local editorial and advertising, Sugar Inc. ( SugarInc.com :  ) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire FreshGuide Inc., which operates FreshGuide.com : and BookFresh ( BookFresh.com : ). FreshGuide is an online women-focused city guide that provides access to exclusive daily offers from a well-edited selection of local businesses in beauty, health and fitness, dining, travel getaways and other relevant categories. BookFresh provides an online booking service for local businesses, such as spas and salons.
Sugar Inc. is a leading diversified women's media company that includes PopSugar Network and PopSugar TV, producing original content and social community for women, and ShopStyle, a social shopping service that brings together the most fashionable stores and the best brands. Sugar has had rapid organic audience growth since inception four years ago and today reaches over 16M monthly unique visitors globally.
"We are constantly striving to add innovative offerings that entertain and delight our audience," said Brian Sugar, founder and CEO of Sugar Inc. "We felt there were tremendous synergies between Sugar and FreshGuide that could be achieved by combining our large audience with their local service. We are very excited to be able to bring to our readers exclusive daily offers at the best places to eat, exercise, shop, and relax in their local areas."
FreshGuide was founded in 2008 by Ryan Donahue, a veteran of Pay Pal, and launched its first service, BookFresh, later that year. In January 2010, the company launched FreshGuide.com to provide local offers by city. Currently, FreshGuide operates in four markets: San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Seattle. FreshGuide will continue to operate under Sugar Inc. as a separate brand.
"FreshGuide is focused on providing exclusive, local offers for women. By integrating our service with the PopSugar Network's addictive editorial content, we are creating a city-based editorial and offers of unmatched quality in the market," said Donahue. "This acquisition will also allow us to dramatically expand our reach and accelerate our growth. We plan to launch FreshGuide in 30 additional cities over the next 18 months in the U.S. and internationally in the UK, France, Germany and Australia where Sugar Inc. has operations."
Online local advertising is forecast to grow at a 19 percent annual rate over the next four years and is expected to be a $19 billion market in 2010, according to BIA Kelsey Group. Most of that growth is coming from the decline of the $120 billion traditional local advertising market.
"We believe the winning business model for next generation media companies must include diverse revenue streams. This conviction led to our acquisition of ShopStyle in 2007, which provided Sugar with a new marketing channel for retailers and brands to acquire visitors that met their ROI goals. The acquisition of ShopFlick, now PopSugar Studios, in 2009, enabled Sugar to launch PopSugar TV and provide advertisers a compelling video environment for branded entertainment. Similarly, we believe that FreshGuide will provide local advertisers the ability to advertise to Sugar's large audience in a high-quality and cost-effective manner. The FreshGuide service will also provide Sugar's national advertisers and retailers with a new way to extend their brands into local markets as we develop our local city guides," added Sugar.
About Sugar Inc.
Sugar Inc. is privately held and backed by world-class investor Sequoia Capital.
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| Women, "health", and the beauty standard - Feministing Posted: 14 Jun 2010 08:58 PM PDT *Note: possible eating disorder related trigger So I've been thinking a lot about how much of women's "health" is aimed at things other than, you know, actual health. I speak here, personally, as a young, fairly thin woman. Not fashion model material, but measuring as the so-vaunted hourglass figure. I also speak as someone who has watched a mother gain weight from medicine, and the aftermath of that. To start, a few personal stories. At one point, I basically stopped eating. I was having solid food once every three days or so. A number of people complimented me, told me how good I looked, how wonderful it was that I had managed to lose weight. Even though I was already at the very bottom of the "healthy" scale. (My BMI is naturally somewhere between 17 and 18.) Another incident: Last semester I enrolled in a strength training class. Yes, for my health. Primarily because exercise helps my mood immensely, secondarily because I just plain want to be a bit stronger and thought it would be better to get some training in a supervised environment instead of hurting myself on my own. I was amazed at the number of responses that, explicitly or implicitly, said that I was doing it for my weight. Some were outright warnings not to "get too into it," because I would start looking "masculine" if I gained too much muscle mass. Some were comments like "Why would you do that? You already look great!" Note one thing in common here: while both situations were framed as being about my health, neither really ended up having anything to do with my health. My "health" apparently consists, almost exclusively, in how attractive I look. This, I think, is the important point. Our society frames healthy in terms of what it thinks is attractive. These need to be divorced from each other. The most obvious connection is in eating disorders, but this affects all of us. Health is a complex thing, and we are almost expected to sacrifice it for the sake of beauty. In closing: take care of yourself, sisters, no matter what body shape you have, and don't let anyone tell you that you are healthy or unhealthy based on whether you are thin or fat. Oh, and, feel free to discuss more ways this affects heavier-weight women, women of color, etc. Like I said, I am naturally thin, I'm sure there's plenty of effects that I'm missing here. 0 TrackBacksListed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Women, "health", and the beauty standard. TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/19775 5 CommentsFive Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Sweaters were my best friend when I was having eating issues. I really didn't want the more unsightly aspects of that time to be visible, to myself or others. Some of my friends were worried regardless.
Even though I know I shouldn't care, I can't help but think of my appearance whenever I think about my health and weight. My figure (what little of one I have) is important to me. It frustrates me, because I'm all about being accepting of different body types, yet at the same time I want the 'ideal' figure for myself.
I see this all the time. I'm overweight, but I'm not unhealthy. I mean this as in I go to the doctor and my BMI registers as obese (what a loaded term). But then you look at my other indicators (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc,) and I'm in the normal range. I'm 5'3" and 185 lbs for those of you familiar w/ US measurements.
I now eat (mostly) healthy and I exercise for one hour 2-3 times a week, in a high intensity cardio setting. In addition, 2-3 times a week I exercise leisurely in walks or swims.
However a few years ago my blood pressure was getting disturbingly high for someone in their 20's and I had to admit I wasn't exercising hardly at all. So I started these activities that I now love. And of course, when doing these activities, I got the feedback that, "Oh I'm sure you'll see the pounds just come off soon!" Or "don't go shopping, you don't want to buy clothes that will be too big in a few months."
But it couldn't be about weight for me anymore. If I want to be healthy, I have to get my mind in the right place first...meaning I have to accept my body as is. When I didn't, I was too ashamed to try things...like yoga or kickboxing, which are actually great fun for me now.
I totally agree. Thank you for sharing. The "will to health" is such a powerful moral imperative in our society and I've seen very few feminist analyses of what that means for women's bodies, which are always policed to meet the ideal beauty standard (whatever that is).
As a woman recovered from an eating disorder, I look back now and see how frighteningly easy it was for me to cover up my illness because I was doing what was "healthy" (in terms of diet and exercise).
I'm now in your situation, too. I strength-train to improve my mood and feel stronger. (Plus, it's good for your bones if you have had an ED.) And I get the same comments! I really wish people would stop warning women away from strength-training.
Thanks for posting so honestly about your experiences.
I've had similar issues regarding the assumption that thin=healthy, and that people only pursue health because they are trying to lose weight.
I work out every day for half an hour, and a lot of people will make comments like, "You don't need to work out, you're already skinny!" --as if weight loss is the only reason for exercising. Actually, I'm trying to get some nice biceps because I think strong arms are sexy. Weight loss has nothing to do with it.
A few days ago, a dude at a cafe said, "Why would you want green tea? You don't need to lose weight!" and I was infuriated. I don't even believe that green tea has an effect on weight loss. I drink it because it's a kickass antioxidant and tastes good.
My respect for women who go against the cultural status quo and build some muscle is enormous. I don't think that there's anything masculine about it, especially given how much harder it is for women to bulk up. I also have much respect for women who do real pushups.
I am baffled by the cultural pressure that women are under to avoid becoming stronger. It is totally awesome to have your girlfriend able to carry her end of the couch. There is so much pressure on women to accept that they are weak and should be weak, and that sucks in a bad way.