Welcome to the smartest, most sophisticated “coffee klatch” in the Rock River Valley — there’s not a single calorie and no one cares what you wear. Just drop in when you can, stay for a few minutes, let us know how you’re doing and head back to whatever you were doing. Welcome to RockfordWoman.com, our magazine’s new sister.

Launched in mid-June, RockfordWoman.com is a local social networking site that fosters a sense of community and interpersonal support by connecting women to each other and to services and products important in their lives. RockfordWoman.com is a safe and sophisticated place to share, learn and support each other.

The site is built around three content components: social networking, local shopping and local news important to women.
As we build out the site over the next few months, we know we’ll be joined by other Rockford women (and probably some of the guys). Readers of Rockford Woman magazine and RockfordWoman.com are 25 to 60, educated, working outside the home, with families and money to spend. Our target audience makes 80 percent of the financial decisions for their households, and their household income is about $75,000. The women include older GenXers and young baby boomers raising children as well as older boomers enjoying the empty nest, pulling siblings together and caring for older parents.

And, according to a recent national Nielsen online study, women ages 50 to 64 are the single most powerful demographic group driving social networking. (Who says old girls aren’t connected?)

“Social networking” is online jargon for sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — and now RockfordWoman.com — that use “status updates” as efficient ways to talk with friends. They provide easy-to-use ways to share a nugget of information, a series of photos, a recipe or a quick thought or question. Think of these status updates as a casual call across the fence to your neighbor — if we still had fences and neighbors we knew.

Today, what with working outside the home and being scattered around the country, few women have a chance to make neighborhood friends or keep up with their high school companions. Social networking makes that possible.
We are already at the kitchen table. Won’t you stop in for a quick cup?

 — Linda Grist Cunningham and Jennie Pollock