GURL.com
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- The correct title of this article is gURL.com. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
gURL.com is a website and online community for teenage girls. Created as a reaction to the heavily-criticized teen media market, it provides stories, games, webcomics, reference information, and chat between its members. It has been considered a feminist publication.
Founded in 1996 by Esther Drill, Heather Mcdonald, and Rebecca Odes at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, the company has passed through many owners, including iTurf, PrimeMedia, and iVillage. In 2006, gURL was purchased by NBC for $600 million, along with iVillage. The founders are no longer involved with the website.
Membership is free. As a member of gURL.com, one can contribute content to the site, chat on message boards, create polls, and make their own profiles. Members are typically girls between the ages of 13-20.
gURL is credited with being one of the first websites to function as an internet community, at a time when uber-popular web communities such as MySpace did not yet exist. The site also helped pioneer the concept of user generated content in media. Members create and manage their own discussion boards, as well as contribute editorial content in the forms of stories, comics, poetry, and personal quotes.
Because of content dealing with sex, drugs, and abuse, gURL.com has been criticized by parents of members for being "too frank" about touchy subjects. Since the information is free and available on the web, young girls can access information that may be meant for older teens. The site has also been criticized in the same way as many other online communities, which is the safety of its users. This issue is especially important because the users of gURL.com are mostly under the age of 18.
Criticism from the teen users' point of view has been the growing presence of advertising material on the site. Although originally created to encourage teenagers to develop their own opinions, gURL.com does buy advertisement for every page and accept paid content.
gURL has published three printed books.
- DEAL WITH IT! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain and Life as a gURL (1999)
- THE LOOKS BOOK: A Whole New Approach to Beauty, Body Image and Style (2002)
- Where DO I GO FROM HERE? Getting a Life after High School. (2004)
Motto: "gURL is a different approach to the experience of being a teenage girl."
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