P&G shuts down teen girl website

The Procter & Gamble-backed teen girl website, swizzle.co.uk, has shut down almost a year after its much-hyped launch.

This follows the withdrawal of the portal’s chat-room and bulletin board facilities last year, after P&G ended its partnership with US-based Excite@home and announced that it was looking for a new partner (MW November 23).

The company claims that this has not resulted in any redundancies and refused to give more details.

A spokeswoman for P&G says: “Swizzle is no longer part of our strategy, though we continue to have fully-owned brand websites for Olay, Pampers and Pantene, as well as partnerships with other sites including Bolt.com and Beme.com”.

Beme.com is IPC Media’s women’s portal and Bolt.com is a US-based site for teenagers. Bolt.com will team up with P&G’s “feminine-protection “products, including the Always and Tampax brands, at the end of next week.

Excite and P&G are understood to have ended their partnership following a dispute over regulation of content in the chatrooms. At the time P&G refused to comment.

Last year, another teenage start-up site, Wowgo, backed by P&G’s rival consumer goods giant, Unilever, ceased trading after failing to raise funds to sustain the site (MW November 16).