Edge content made 1990s women’s webzines unsustainable commercially and led to their decline

Evidence

At first, these sites were successful. Estronet and ChickClick merged in 1998; ChickClick sponsored the 1999 Lillith Fair. But the dot-com bust led to a steep decline in such sites, which because of their “edgy” content were a difficult draw for advertisers. Mainstream women’s sites like iVillage and Oxygen hired several webzine veterans to write and produce their content, probably due to their early adopter status and comfort with the web medium. Eventually, the early in de pen dent webzines petered out, or turned into blogs, and the most popular sites for women remained those about “online horoscopes, sex tips, celebrities and parenting advice.” The anti-capitalist, multicultural perspectives disappeared entirely from mainstream women’s sites. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 95

Categorization

• XREF: The dynamic where explicitly ideological/edgy creators get absorbed and diluted by mainstream commercial platforms forecasts the gentrification dynamic discussed in later influencer-culture scholarship.