Mumsnet Talk

Look at the site numbers for Mumsnet here:

business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6926004.ece

It's busy, busy, busy.

That's a lot of people.

why have i never heard of raisingkids? or UKfamily?

<bemused>

Madwoman, true! Have never heard of those 2. Not that I'm the parenting website expert by any means.

i posted on raising kids for a while before i found mn.had lots of help and advice from the posters

mn was just alot faster to use

Sorry for being slow, I was surprised first by the MN numbers.

But that's just not right, surely, that those Raising Kids and UK family get that number of visitors a month.

No idea about netmums. I've heard of those other two, but really, only just. How can they have so many visitors and be so unsuccessful? I don't believe...

I used to use Raising Kids but have been a Mumsnetter longer- it got pretty rubbish after they sold out to Disney- I felt you couldn't make a less than fluffy comment without being moderated! No great loss to me, but for some people it was a lifeline, so bang out of order for Disney to buy them out just to shut them down!

I have never heard of either of them. I seriously doubt that they were having that many visitors.

Netmums local stuff is pretty good. The rest of it is to fluffy for my liking.

I'd never heard of Raising Kids or UK Family.
Seems a strange thing to happen when you look at those figures though.

http://www.rkforums.com/talk/index.php

So are gone are we not likely and we are on here to.

I'll bet there is loads on here or netsmums on RK as well.

Not all of us use one site you know

www.rkforums.com/talk/index.php

forgot the bloody [[ ]]

uk family pre-dated mumsnet but the site was slow to load. It had also taken recently to asking people to post information of the type used by banks as security information. so I guess it had declining use.

raising kids I don't know as much about but it's been around quite a time and had fairly active message boards.

Seems like there are masses of parenting sites now.

I wonder if it is about revenue... Disney may have brought the sites with hopes that revenue generated by the sites could be increased. Mumsnet doesn't seem quite so interested in increasing revenue, they certainly do care about covering costs but I'm not so sure MNHQ are wanting to make large profits. Mumsnet doesn't have shareholders as such... unlike DIS which has numerous shareholders/investors who they need to keep happy. Their latest financial report says that earnings per share (EPS) are down 20% this year vs last year. Looks to me as though Disney Interactive Media had yearly loss of $295 million... so closing sites that cost them money to operate without producing profits I can see as being something they would do, to help decrease the losses.

Consolidation in the market place may be a good thing... there are lots of parenting sites around, some small some big. I expect that over the next few years we will see more sites merge / close, leaving a few major websites - with luck Mumsnet will be one of the ones that survives.

"Family.com, the American parenting site, also owned by Disney."

Does anyone think that sounds the epitome of cyber-hell?

Ahem:
Mumsnet Limited. Registered in England and Wales. Registration No 03951486

Are you sure about that shareholder comment NN?

Limited company... could be two people. It's not a PLC, isn't listed on the Stock Exchange, so doesn't have lots of people holding shares. There will be very few people holding shares, possibly just two.
Don't think we can find out easily... though maybe MNHQ will see this and confirm.

It certainly does OrmIrian.

It sounds like they bought up the competition to shut them down.

Catinthehat2 - you could be right, looked on CompaniesHouse Webcheck and there are entries in 2005 for SI and IC... which I think are investment companies. This short article on BrandRepublic talks of private investors. So those investors will be wanting a return on their investment at some point.

I remember Raising Kids. I visited it before finding MN. Infact I discovered MN in Jan 2003, after seeing a link to MN on it - was some thread which had uproar going on, etc.

One of the elements that RK had which was unique was a board devoted to parents of children with Autism and Asperger's. Very well used, vital source of information and support. Also had a fairly active teen section.

I remember ukfamily I used to post on it before I even posted on babyworld.. don't use any of those sites now

I used to post on raisingkids, I too abandoned them when they sold out to Disney. They were a bit more Netmums than Mumsnet, but pretty sad that Disney have closed it down as there were some nice people there.