Back

TIME MAGAZINE TO PARTNER WITH BLACKPLANET.COM IN CONTENT DEAL AIMED AT REACHING THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
________________________
February 5, 2001

Campaign to launch with Historic Archived TIME Magazine Content on BlackPlanet.com throughout Black History Month

New York, NY -- TIME Magazine and BlackPlanet.com announced today that they have partnered in a news content deal to reach the more than 1.8 million members on the Web's most highly trafficked African-American site. TIME will launch the deal by providing historic TIME Magazine content to BlackPlanet.com throughout Black History Month. The campaign is the first Web initiative of TIME Magazine's multicultural marketing outreach - a multi-tiered strategy aimed at increasing the magazine's profile in various ethnic markets.

"We are very pleased to partner with the premier destination for African-Americans on the Web," said Melvin Young, Marketing Director, Multicultural Markets, TIME Magazine. "Our hope is to provide BlackPlanet.com's audience with a valuable historical archive that they can turn to online. And for TIME, this represents a wonderful opportunity to showcase our magazine's coverage of African American achievement during Black History Month and beyond."

As part of the partnership, TIME is providing to BlackPlanet.com on an exclusive basis a selection of stories that have appeared throughout more than half a century of the magazine's existence. Throughout the month of February, the content will feature eight profiles written on African American leaders such as Marian Anderson and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, as well as other topics of relevance to BlackPlanet.com's members and the greater African American community.

"We believe our partnership with TIME magazine will set the standard for how publishers can integrate their content and brands on sites frequented by the exploding numbers of African-Americans online," said Omar Wasow, Executive Director of BlackPlanet.com. "The selection of BlackPlanet.com by the nation's premier news weekly is a nod to the tremendous loyalty and following our site has within the African-American community and further solidifies our leadership position within the space."

BlackPlanet.com will also work with TIME to offer its members trial subscriptions to the news weekly. As a premium for signing up, BlackPlanet.com will award points utilizing its popular Member Points loyalty program, where members accumulate points for interacting on the site and participating in special promotions. Members are able to trade in points for various BlackPlanet.com branded merchandise such as CDs and clothing items.

In addition to the Black History Month campaign, TIME will continue to provide a combination of stories from TIME's archives and weekly analysis of current events. Starting this spring, TIME's content will be featured on a "mini-site" which will be hosted by BlackPlanet.com.

About BlackPlanet.com
Launched in September 1999, BlackPlanet.com is one of the Web's top online destinations. With more than 1.8 million registered members, the site generates over 360 million page views per month and is a top leader in average time spent on the site by visitors; users spend an average of 2.5 hours on the site per month. BlackPlanet.com provides members with free personal pages, innovative content, and news about up-to-the-minute topics important to the African-American community. Members stay connected to one other through forums, chat rooms and instant messaging. BlackPlanet.com is a wholly owned property of Community Connect Inc., the leading developer of dedicated online communities targeted to US ethnic audiences. Community Connect's other Web sites include AsianAvenue.com and MiGente.com, which target the Asian and Latino communities respectively.

About TIME
TIME is one of the world's best-known publications, read by more than 28 million people around the globe. Now in its 79th year of publication, TIME's mission is to "be a source of honest information and thoughtful judgement." With a domestic circulation of more than 4 million, TIME is America's lead newsweekly and currently has a U.S. readership of approximately 22 million. TIME was the first newsweekly to publish online, beginning in 1993. TIME.com, which features original Web-only content along with some of the best stories from TIME receives as many as 4 million visitors a month. TIME also publishes TIME For Kids, a classroom publication that currently reaches more than 3.5 million school age children, as well as On Magazine (formerly TIME Digital), a personal technology guide with a circulation of more than 1 million.