BlogHer and iVillage Poll Reveals: Majority Of Women Still Find Romance In Valentine’s Day

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NEW YORK CITY – February 5, 2009 – Despite America's celebrity-obsessed culture, more American women chose "none" or their own significant others than Brad Pitt, George Clooney or Johnny Depp combined when asked the ideal person to spend Valentine's Day with in a recent survey by BlogHer and iVillage. Conducted in January 2009 as part of a larger initiative to find out what women really think about this most button-pushing of holidays, the joint survey received more than 10,000 online responses. The data revealed that the vast majority of women still take pleasure in celebrating Valentine’s Day, despite much of the negative hype the holiday has received as being clichéd and overly commercialized.

The survey also showed that fully 45 percent of women, when asked what they would give up for one month to ensure "an awesome Valentine's Day," agreed they would give up chocolate (10%), alcohol (9%), anything (8%), television (5%), coffee (5%), sex (5%), or the Internet (3%). Still others revealed definite ambivalence about the holiday: 19% answered they would give up "nothing - it is meaningless."

Participants who value Valentine's Day, however, were reluctant to postpone a breakup purely for the sake of having a Valentine: 41 percent said that if they were already headed for splitsville, they’d prefer to get it over with before the holiday.

Other survey highlights include:

For complete survey results please contact Lindsey Scott (lscott@racepointgroup.com) or Laura Goldberg (laura.goldberg@nbcuni.com) or go to http://tinyurl.com/bqqdg8. You can also visit http://www.blogher.com/valentines-day-2009 or http://www.ivillage.com/valentines to learn more about the joint Valentine’s Day initiative, which includes a community editorial project entitled “Letter to My Heart” and is part of the strategic partnership between BlogHer and iVillage launched in July 2008.

About iVillage
iVillage Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of NBC Universal, Inc., is the first and most established media company dedicated exclusively to connecting women at every stage of their lives. iVillage offers an authentic and robust community infused with compelling content from experts on health, parenting, pregnancy, beauty, style, fitness, relationships, food and entertainment. The site's interactive features include thousands of message boards and a wide variety of social networking tools, allowing women around the world to connect, share ideas, and seek advice and support about everything from fertility to fashion. Established in 1995, iVillage's brand extensions include iVillage UK, Your Total Health and owned sites Astrology.com and GardenWeb, in addition to the Newborn Channel. The company, acquired by NBC Universal, Inc. in May 2006, is based in New York.

About BlogHer
Founded in February 2005 by Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone, BlogHer’s mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. BlogHer provides the number-one community and media network of blogs by women via a community hub (http://blogher.com), annual conferences and an advertising network of more than 2,500 qualified, contextually targeted blog affiliates. BlogHer provides the highest quality content on a range of topics, with all blogs continually edited to meet strict editorial standards, including content quality, category relevance and blog frequency. In July 2008, BlogHer entered into a strategic partnership with iVillage, part of Women@NBCU, which includes other NBC Universal brands including Bravo and Oxygen. The partnership also includes an investment by Peacock Equity, a joint venture between NBC Universal and GE Commercial Finance’s Media, Communications and Entertainment business, and returning investor Venrock.

Press Contacts:
Lindsey Scott
Racepoint Group
lscott@racepointgroup.com
415-694-6713

Laura Goldberg
NBC Universal
laura.goldberg@nbcuni.com
347-683-1859
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