Per­sonal News Net­work from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here’s an 8-minute video inter­view with Leigh Behrens, pres­i­dent and editor-in-chief of PNN.com. The Per­sonal News Net­work is a com­mu­nity site and blog plat­forms that tar­gets mostly women, “the fastest-growing seg­ment of user-generated con­tent cre­ators,” Leigh says.

PNN allows you to eas­ily get up and run­ning with a blog and add your own voice and “to begin to grow your own social con­tent on the site,” she says.

“The feed­back we keep get­ting is that there’s really a kind of an inti­mate, per­sonal and sup­port­ive feel­ing that goes back to our name — Per­sonal News Net­work. Peo­ple like the idea that they can share their thoughts and ideas in an envi­ron­ment that’s really supportive.”

Users can add not just text posts but pho­tos, video and audio, too. Peo­ple post “news” in the broad­est sense of the word — a few eye­wit­ness accounts of break­ing news but for the most part shar­ing expe­ri­ences, obser­va­tions and opin­ions with others.

The front page fea­tures blog­gers writ­ing on such top­ics as Liv­ing, Pol­i­tics, Money and Gos­sip. “But any­one can be a star on PNN if their posts are voted up by the com­mu­nity,” Leigh says. Mommy blog­gers are a big part of the site as well as “pas­sion groups” like wine, books or parenting.

PNN is work­ing with part­ners in both the social media and tra­di­tional media spaces, and that’s partly inspired by Leigh’s back­ground in jour­nal­ism. I inter­viewed her a few years back when she headed up the Chicago Tribune’s Metro­Mix ini­tia­tive that was one of the first exam­ples of news­pa­pers engag­ing the com­mu­nity to pro­vide user-created mate­ri­als. She then moved to the New York Times to develop ver­ti­cals such as winetravel.com.

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JD Lasica works with major com­pa­nies and non­prof­its on social media strate­gies. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact JD or leave a comment.

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