ChickClick was an American website for women that was online from 1998 to 2002. It was created by Heidi Swanson as a

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displa ...

for websites created by young women. The website also served as an

online community An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...

, with a message board and Internet radio program called ChickClick Radio. It also provided a free e-mail and web hosting service, known as Chickmail and Chickpages respectively. After ChickClick's launch in February 1998, it merged with EstroNet in October 1998. After the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

burst in 2000, the website became defunct in 2002 and now redirects to '' IGNs website. During its years online, ChickClick was associated with

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very s ...

culture and

third-wave feminism Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X and early Gen Y generations third-w ...

. It was nominated for two

Webby Awards The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories includ ...

in 2001.

History

Wanting to create alternative media for young women online, Heidi Swanson created ChickClick when she was 25 years old. She pitched the idea to Chris Anderson, the head of Imagine Media who owned IGN, requesting a computer to allow herself and her younger sister, Heather, to build the website. At the time, Swanson had quit her job as a web designer after working for six weeks due to focusing on her Master's Degree at Stanford University. Shortly after ChickClick's initial launch in February 1998, it merged with EstroNet, a network of female-oriented Internet properties, in October. ChickClick then divided its content between MissClick, targeted towards teenagers, and EstroClick, targeted towards adults. Afterwards, ChickClick began expanding on its web services, such as its free e-mail and web hosting services. Swanson explained that the web hosting, in addition to ChickClick's message boards, was to scaffold young women into using technology to both create and consume content. In February 1999, ChickClick became managed by Affiliation Networks, a company created as an offshoot of Imagine Media focusing on its online properties, whose name was later changed into Snowball in August 1999. In addition, ChickClick sponsored the music festival

Lilith Fair Lilith Fair was a concert tour and travelling music festival, founded by Canadian musician Sarah McLachlan, Nettwerk Music Group's Dan Fraser and Terry McBride, and New York talent agent Marty Diamond. It took place during the summers of 199 ...

. The website also had plans to launch news channels, including SheWire, a technology-related news channel aimed at women. In 2000, ChickClick launched an online radio program called ChickClick Radio. Following the

burst, ChickClick faced several employee lay-offs, and both Swanson sisters left the staff to work on

Kibu.com Kibu.com was an American website for teenage girls that was created in 1999 and launched in 2000. The website was founded as an online community for girls to discuss and exchange advice. Kibu.com secured a US$22 million investment from high-prof ...

. In 2002, Snowball announced that they were closing ChickClick, citing "changes in the economy" as its reason as a reference to its financial losses.

Content

ChickClick was launched as a

and

aimed at women, featuring links to content that parodied mainstream

teen Adolescence () is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood (typically corresponding to the age of majority). Adolescence is usually associated with the te ...

and women's magazines. Websites that were part of ChickClick's network included the Disgruntled Housewife; Riotgrrl; GrrlGamer; and Bimbionic. Unlike general women's magazines at the time, ChickClick was seen as "edgy", with personal content and an aesthetic combining

riot grrrl Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. Riot grrrl is a sub ...

visuals with "reclaimed girl culture" such as

Hello Kitty , also known by her full name , is a fictional character created by Yuko Shimizu, currently designed by Yuko Yamaguchi, and owned by the Japanese company Sanrio. Sanrio depicts Hello Kitty as an anthropomorphized white cat with a red bow and n ...

and "ironic" artwork from the 1950s. ChickClick also featured a message board, where users could participate. It also had a free e-mail and web hosting service that was powered by

Lycos Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Waltha ...

. The e-mail service Chickmail and web hosting service Chickpages were advertised to the teenage demographic, while Estromail and Estropages were advertised to the adult demographic. Websites hosted on Chickpages and Estropages were part of ChickClick's network, and the owners of ChickClick would profit from the advertisements.

EstroNet

Like ChickClick, EstroNet was created as a collaborative network of websites and

s aimed at women. It was intended to drive traffic towards independent websites created by women. In addition, Heather Irwin, one of its founders, planned for EstroNet to host original content, such as spotlighting women in the technology industry. EstroNet's member sites included ''Maxi'', its first member; and ''HUES'' (acronym for ''Hear Us Emerging Sisters''), founded by Ophira Edut and aimed at women of color; '' Bust'', a print zine; Gurl.com; ''Minxmag'', an online zine sponsored by

Pseudo.com Pseudo.com was an early streaming content service. It was founded by Josh Harris (internet), Josh Harris, who broadcast an AM radio show solely dedicated to the Internet, after which tapes of the show would be carried 12 blocks from the WEVD Radio ...

; ''Women's Room'', an online zine on

Tripod A tripod is a portable three-legged frame or stand, used as a platform for supporting the weight and maintaining the stability of some other object. The three-legged (triangular stance) design provides good stability against gravitational loads ...

; and ''Wench''. The founders of EstroNet were familiar with Heidi Swanson since 1995, and as ChickClick had corporate funding, which EstroNet lacked, they allowed Swanson to take over the website. After merging with ChickClick in October 1998, EstroNet's original content was divided into its own category, EstroClick, aimed at older women.

Analysis

Critical reception

In 1998, ChickClick received more than a million visits a month. ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cult ...

'' gave the website a B+, stating that both ChickClick and EstroNet had "useful information, provocative thought, and handsome visuals laid out with clarity and taste" but that its effect can be hard to take seriously. ChickClick was also one of the websites criticized for having sexual information, and in 1999, anti-pornography advocates cited concerns that this would lead to more underage sexual activity and cause harmful development in young girls.

Awards

Use in academia

ChickClick has been used as a study of

culture and women's media in the 1990s. Scholars Tasha Oren and Andrea Press named ChickClick as one of the websites that encouraged female participation on the Internet. They also noticed that while ChickClick was active as part of the zine culture, it was branded as alternative content for women and separated itself from

radical feminist Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other s ...

zines.

References

{{reflist American women's websites Community websites Companies based in San Francisco Defunct American websites Dot-com bubble English-language websites Feminist mass media Feminist websites Free web hosting services Internet forums Internet properties established in 1998 Internet properties disestablished in 2002 Online magazines published in the United States Third-wave feminism Zines