AskMen.com

AskMen.com

URL	http://www.askmen.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Online men's publication
Registration	Optional
Owner	IGN Fox Interactive Media News Corporation
Created by	Ricardo Poupada Chris Bellerose Rovny Luís Rodrigues
Launched	January 2000

AskMen.com is a free online men’s web portal, with international versions in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia.

History

AskMen.com was founded in August 1999 by Ricardo Poupada, Christopher Bellerose Rovny, and Luís Rodrigues, all three graduates of Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal. The company secured $500,000 in venture capital in 2000 while its main competitor, TheMan.com, obtained $17 million in financing from Highland Capital. In November 2000, TheMan.com shut down operations, providing an opportunity for AskMen.com to become the largest men's lifestyle website online.^[1] By 2001, AskMen.com surpassed the other websites in its category to become the largest men's lifestyle website.^[2]

Through a combination of partnerships with AOL and MSN, AskMen.com became the leader in the men's lifestyle space, though it still trailed ESPN.com and other websites in terms of total reach within the male segment on the Web. It has one of the highest concentration of males online, according to Media Metrix's @Plan.

In 2010 the site ranked #819 for world-wide traffic on Alexa.^[3] In December 2009 the site had as estimated 12 million unique visitors.^[4]

Website content

AskMen.com’s sections feature topics that are pertinent^[who?] to men. The sections include:

AskMen.com has an annual list of Top 99 Most Desirable Women, The AskMen.com Top 49 Men, and The Player’s Guide, a paid subscription sub-site.

According to Hitwise, AskMen.com is consistently ranked No. 1 in the "Lifestyle – Men’s Sites" category, as it has over 40,000 articles available for free online.^[5]

Print

AskMen.com launched a three-book series published by HarperCollins in May 2007, starting with their first book titled From the Bar to the Bedroom.^[6]

Corporate details

AskMen.com offers the bulk of its articles for free and therefore makes its money mostly from advertising.

In June 2005, AskMen.com was acquired by IGN, an Internet gaming network, for $13.5 million. IGN was then acquired by News Corporation in September 2005 for $650 million.

References