• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 6, 2008

Looking to expand its distributed media model beyond female shopaholics, e-publisher and ad network Glam Media has partnered with Russell Simmons' Global Grind social network to launch a managed vertical network of sites and blogs for the hip-hop community.

Global Grind is a privately held firm funded by Accel Partners and Simmons, who founded the Def Jam music label and the Phat Farm clothing brand, among other ventures.

As a community platform, Global Grind opened its doors in January for members of the hip-hop world to discover and share content from across the Web, by linking to, voting for, and commenting on each others' content.

Voting-submitted content up and down is the cornerstone functionality of the Web site, which is referred to as "grinding" and "trashing."

"Over 24 million people in the U.S. self-identify themselves as members of the hip-hop community, but no (related) social network has been able to get more than 4-and-a-half to 5 million monthly users," said Navarrow Wright, president and CEO of Global Grind. "We're going to change that by offering an inclusive network for the whole community."

The hip-hop-based vertical network will include content from Global Grind along with other hip-hop-based blogs and Web sites. The trouble, however, is that Global Grind doesn't yet have any sites or blogs lined up to join the co-branded publisher network.

To help new talent emerge online, Global Grind and Glam will be launching a hip-hop "Be Discovered" competition in October. "We know there are hundreds--no, thousands--of blogs out there for us," Wright said.

It will mark the third "Be Discovered" competition for Glam, which began the contest in 2007 with handbag designers, and more recently held a Design a Dress competition in partnership with MSN.

The Glam Managed Vertical Network platform offers media companies infrastructure and tool sets to create vertical ad networks. With the Glam MVN, media companies can recruit publishers, manage inventory, set pricing, serve and optimize campaigns, support multiple billing systems, and offer both publishers and advertisers a range of reports and technical support.

As a distributed media business, Glam endeavors to support its publisher partners, while remaining the best way to bring premium brand display advertisers to the Web. Based on this model, Glam is targeting revenue of $100 million by the end of next year, its CEO Samir Arora recently told Online Media Daily. "Global Grind provides our advertisers premium distribution within the hip-hop community and delivers key audiences to brands," said John Trimble, executive vice president of new market sales at Glam Media.

The partnership also leverages Glam Media's new flagship service GlamTV, launched just last week, which allows publishers in the Glam Network to access rights-cleared content and independent videos packaged with brand advertising for their Web sites.