Girls talking smak: New social news site launches, just for women

On March 18 Smaknews will launch a new kind of social media website aimed at women who are looking for a social news site devoid of comments asking if they are a real woman. Smaknews will have two main categories at launch, one to cover celebrity news and another labeled "for her" which will feature shopping, finance tips for women, tech news and much more.

Smaknews looks to combine the best of several popular social media sites and provide a destination for women who want to share interesting links, create original blog posts, and more. One example of bringing in the best aspects of social media from other sites is the Twitter-like ability to "Talk Smak" about a topic. Users can talk "smak" about anything they encounter, even if it isn't on Smaknews as a blog post or linked story; sharing a sentence and a link with other users and generating discussion around it.

According to CEO Bridget Ayers, Smaknews is looking to be a destination where women can, "let their hair down ... a place of their own to have fun discussing celebrity news, entertainment, fashion and beauty." Though the site has a core set of topics it expects to take direction from users as it grows to continually offer topics of interests to all women whether their pleasure is Brangelina, Botegga Vennata handbags or the newest Blackberry.

The rating system used by Smaknews eschews the traditional thumbs/up thumbs down in favor of more emotional or mood based feedback such as, "Love it/Hate it/Want it/LOL/WTF/etc" to make it easier to find what users are looking for. You don't have to have two "X" chromosomes to know that making it easier to find an article is a good thing.

You can sign up for access to the Smaknews beta right now and if you want a sneak peak at the attitude and topics that will be covered, you can follow Smaknews on twitter to get a better feel.