Stardoll Dresses Piczo Up As A Blogging Network In Another Relaunch

The relaunched Piczo.com

Seven months after merging with fellow tween-and-teen-friendly sites Stardoll and Paperdoll Heaven to form the Stardoll Network, Sweden-based social network Piczo has relaunched as a “lifestyle blogging platform”, in an attempt to get its 30 million registered users expressing themselves and — more importantly — talking about fashion brands.

Stardoll Network says Piczo has a new “interactive way to reach this key demographic”, in which users are encouraged to take part in “fashion and entertainment-oriented, photo-rich blogging”.

Girls can pick clothes from an online wardrobe and tag each item with its name, brand and a shop that stocks it (see this example) — a clear route to pleasing fashion-based ad networks. It also opens up the opportunity for e-commerce sales and affiliate marketing deals.

At the same time, the site now wants to attract a slightly older, more fashion-conscious and cash-rich audience: whereas the majority of Stardoll Network users are in the five-20 age range, the new Piczo aims to appeal to the 14 to 24-year-old market and under-13s are not even allowed to sign up.

Stardoll had attempted to merge aspects of Piczo with its other sites, such as through stardoll.piczo.com, where users can (or could) create a fashion doll and upload it to Piczo — but the latest move seems to mark out Piczo as a standalone site for young women keen on high street shopping, rather than girls who like playing with virtual dolls.

Merged in March and backed by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, Stardoll’s three sites attract 22.5 million unique monthly users.

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