• by Shankar Gupta , December 8, 2006

Online publishing company Nerve Media, known for writing about sex and culture, is launching a new site, aimed at young, urban parents. The new site, Babble.com, is slated to go live Monday.

At launch, the site will include ads from a number of endemic brands, including the Netto Collection, Skiphop, Zutano, and Scandanavian Child, as well as American Apparel, which had a pre-existing sponsorship relationship with Nerve.com. "We didn't really open the launch to many advertisers--we really wanted to stay with brands that are very relevant to kids and babies," said co-publisher Elisa Volkman. "We wanted to hand-select a group of advertisers whose sensibility was similar to ours."

Babble aims to differentiate itself from the pack of parenting sites by recruiting big-name writers with bylines in non-parenting magazines and published books. At launch, the lineup includes pieces by Walter Kirn, Marjorie Ingall and A.M. Homes. "Most of the writers we have have never written about parenting before, but they're qualified because they're great writers, and they have kids," said site editor-in-chief Ada Calhoun.