MSN Glo, a New Lifestyle Destination for Women

With its most recent expansion into the online lifestyle world, Microsoft aims to grow its portfolio of content dedicated to the adult female audience. Glo was initially announced in December 2009, but, at that time, the software giant only revealed that it planned to deliver a new web destination for women by mid-2010. Built in collaboration with Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. (HFM U.S.) and BermanBraun, Glo (also via MSN) went live on April 6th, 2010.

This is, of course, not the first time that MSN and BermanBraun have joined forces. “We’re excited to build on our successful partnership with BermanBraun, adding the category branding expertise and panache of HFM U.S. to deliver a compelling new lifestyle experience on MSN,” Scott Moore, regional partner executive producer, MSN, said.

Almost a year ago, MSN and BermanBraun unveiled Wonderwall, offering a new perspective over celebrity life. Glo comes to complement the entertainment and celebrity information available on Wonderwall, by delivering content for an adjacent space, focused on style, beauty, living and relationships.

“Lifestyle is one of our top content priorities because of its popularity among consumers and advertisers, and Glo is a great addition to our lifestyle portfolio. The launches of the new MSN home page and WONDERWALL have shown us the importance of delivering visually compelling and innovative designs and how quickly we can attract millions of customers using the distribution power of MSN,” Moore added.

Anne Weintraub will serve as the executive editor of Glo, coming from ELLE, where she held several positions, such as that of former online director. According to statistics offered by the Redmond company, the lifestyle content on MSN attracts over 8.2 million unique users a month. In under a year since release, Wonderwall exploded to over 9.5 million uniques and 225 million page views per month. It is clear that Microsoft is expecting a similar performance out of Glo.

MSN Glo, after all, features a similar approach with MSN and BermanBraun joining forces, but also through its innovative and unique design, which represents a marriage of a traditional magazine layout and the navigation flexibility delivered by a Silverlight website.

“Following our successful partnership with MSN in bringing WONDERWALL to the celebrity entertainment space, we are thrilled to be partnering with Hachette and MSN to create Glo — a new and unique lifestyle brand. We believe the innovative design and distinctive tone of Glo will excite both the online audience and our advertising partners,” BermanBraun partners Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun stated.

Glo boasts a range of interesting features that are bound to resonate with its target audience. Visitors can save “scraps” from the website to their Scrapbook page, but also share content with friends via Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live, enjoy integration with Facebook and the Bing decision engine. MSN has already penned advertising deals with Vaseline, JCPenney and Fox Broadcasting Company.