No need to shun Shine!

If you’re one of the two readers of this site who stops here before finding out that Yahoo has a new women’s website / experience / magazine — let me tell you what to think about it.

Shine collects their favorite stories and posts from the internets PLUS some original writing in an attempt to be a one-stop-content shop for busy busy women. I don’t know if this help or hurt fledgling sites like ours but I don’t think we’re necessarily frenemies.

Let’s start with the good stuff:

• The Parenting editor is Crazedparent — she’s funny and has two sons. The overall editor is from Jane Magazine and about to become a rookie mom herself. Cool.
• Shine invited us to a little sneak preview and we enjoyed some excellent food and some small trinkets as well as a full afternoon with only grown-ups. Not to mention that the pink purse that came with my magazines made a nice makeshift easter basket for Holden’s egg hunt and also carries up to 17 little trucks and balls with ease.
• They’re one day old and already featured us twice; I could get used to this!
1. Push Play Date (AKA Elmo Sex)
2. Ready for date night? Put your babysitter on retainer.

Sorry, did that just get too “meta” quoting them quoting me? I’m pretty excited if my little words could reach their 45 quadrillion readers. But I digress.

Isn’t there maybe a dark side to all this link love and content aggregation? Jason Calanacis certainly thinks so. While I was busy emailing a friend the articles above, my husband sent me this blog post about why content providers should drop Yahoo in favor of writer-friendly Google. He says:

If Yahoo wants to go “winner take all” that’s their right, but the niche content sites should stand up for themselves and vote with their partnership dollars for a true partner who doesn’t run off with your business in the night.

Yikes. But they were so nice to me. They fed me and gave me a makeover (sure, Alec teased me about looking like a hooker - but that’s a story for another day), how can they be bad?

Time will tell whether this shiny new online magazine succeeds by partnering with us or by smooshing us out. I wonder if I’ll be able to tell the difference.

What do you think, Whitney? World?