AskMen.com

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

AskMen.com is a Canadian-based, free online men’s portal that was founded in August 1999 by Ricardo Poupada, Christopher Bellerose Rovny and Luis Rodrigues. The company secured $500,000 in venture capital in 2000 while its main competitor TheMan.com obtained $17M in financing from Highland Capital. In November, 2000, TheMan.com shut operations, providing an opportunity for AskMen.com to become the largest men's lifestyle website online [1]. By 2001, AskMen.com surpassed the other lad mag's websites to become the largest men's lifestyle website [2].

Through a combination of partnerships with AOL and MSN, AskMen.com became the leader in the men's lifestyle space, though it still trailed ESPN.com and other websites in terms of total reach within the male segment on the Web.

As of July 2005, the site claims 5 million unique visitors, according to comScore Media Metrix.

1 Website Content
2 Message Boards
3 Corporate Details
4 Managing Editors & Staff
5 References
6 External link

[edit] Website Content

AskMen.com’s sections feature topics that are pertinent to men. The sections include:

Dating & Love
Sexuality
Women
Men
Fashion & Lifestyle
Health & Sports
Power & Money
Entertainment
Gaming
Poker
Joke of the Day
Cool Site of the Day
Video of the Day
Gadget of the Day

Other unique sections, specific to AskMen.com, include its annual list of Top 99 Most Desirable Women, The AskMen.com Top 49 Men, and The Player’s Guide, a paid subscription sub-site that helps men in the realms of dating and sexuality.

According to Hitwise, AskMen.com is consistently ranked No. 1 in the "Lifestyle – Men’s Sites" category, as it has over 13,000 articles available for free online. ^[1] Over the 7 years it has been in function, AskMen.com has had content partnerships with other successful Web properties such as MSN, AOL, Netscape, CompuServe, Univision, and Lycos Asia.

[edit] Message Boards

AskMen.com’s message boards launched on August 9, 2001, and thus far boast over 28,000 members. With over 2 million posts, the most popular topics on the boards include Men's Issues, Current Events/Politics, Love & Relationships.

[edit] Corporate Details

AskMen.com offers the bulk of its articles for free and therefore makes its money from advertising.

In June 2005, AskMen.com was acquired by IGN, an Internet gaming site, for $13.5 million. IGN was then acquired by News Corporation in September 2005 for $650 million.