Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to Launch Marthapedia

Posted on October 7, 2007

Ad Age recently reported that the new social network and user-generated content website from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will be called Marthapedia.

Martha Stewart, the paragon of expertise as content, is adopting the style of social media for her next website -- to be called "Marthapedia." But Ms. Stewart, who didn't get where she is by suggesting that the hoi polloi know more than she does, made clear that Marthapedia will not be so freewheeling as, say, Wikipedia. Editors at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will check to see if the public's ideas are better than their own, she said.

The site initially will be seeded with existing content from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, such as Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook, but will open for information and suggestions from the public, Ms. Stewart told an Advertising Week audience this morning. "It will be a very interesting site," she said.

That's a slight change from last year when the buzz was that the new Martha Stewart website was going to be more of a social network. Bloggers tossed around name ideas like MarthaSpace and MyMartha. Marthapedia already has plenty of competition from crafts blogs and websites geared towards crafters but there's likely room for expert and user-generated content organized and overseen by Martha Stewart's staff.

Martha Stewart does have her own crafts line and she is known for her creative ideas. Martha Stewart's web products have always had more of a guru attidute than a web community so it will be interesting to see whether wikis are a good thing for the craft, fashion, recipe and weddings giant. It will also be interesting to see if they ever try anything new like targeting the growing technology modding trend you see on sites like Makezine.com -- it seems like they are missing one of the biggest do-it-yourself trends.