A Virtual Home For All Auntie Mames!

07/10/2008

Lego's with 15 billion pieces, paint sets with glitter, cell phones for 5-year olds, drinking 553 pots of pretend tea and hours of playing video games, eating ice cream before, during and after meals, trips to the zoo, Disneyland and the aquarium that morph into clothes and make-up shopping trips to the mall, helping write college applications, talks about boys and girl friends and too soon creating resumes and helping to furnish that first apartment. And all the while falling more in love ..

No girlfriend, I'm not talking about parenthood. I'm talking about a world-wide unique relationship with children and their aunts or aunties. Who else would buy a Lego set with 15 billion pieces or give a child a painting kit with glitter and then with a twinkle in her eye wave bye bye telling children and parents to "have fun." Certainly not a grandmama.

In most of life's roles .. one needs a model. My own aunties are/were beyond wonderful but it was my friend "Auntie Polli" who taught me Auntie Lessons 101.  When my favorite niece Jessica Robyn (well okay my only niece Jessica Robyn) was born Auntie Polli had a 3-month head start with aunt-ing her nephew Michael.  It was Auntie Polli who lifted all limitations off Auntie-hood for me.

Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death. Hands down it was Auntie Mame, with her zest for life and her passion for her nephew Patrick, who we gave the Auntie Tiara.  We knew we were loved, we knew we had an important role to play, we knew we made a difference in the lives of our nieces and nephews. But I'll let you in a on little secret .. sometimes even with all the joy - we felt something was missing in Auntieville.

Savvy_auntie Melanie Notkin knew that too. She saw more than a group of random women, young and old, married and not, with their own children or not, and understood that there was a fragmented community that could benefit from a social networking world.  SavvyAuntie was conceived .. the first online community for aunts.

Being a savvy marketer, Melanie knew something else. She had identified an untapped niche. After months of research, careful planning, new media marketing on the Savvy Auntie blog and Twitter - SavvyAuntie opened it's virtual doors yesterday.

The site is built around four channels: Expertise, Activities, Gifts and Community.

Expertise includes dozens of content experts from children's health and nutrition to  financial planning for Aunts who want to make their nieces and nephews their beneficiaries. Activities is where you can find zillions (well a lot!) of ideas for kids on a local level.  In Gifts you can filter/sort in unique ways from your niece's  favorite color to your nephew's must have pop culture character to your own auntie personality. 

What's a social network without a Community? Auntie's can hang out here. Build a profile, write a blog post, participate in groups and forums and read other member's stories about being an aunt in Aunthology.

So now Polli and Chris and Mary and Beth and Diva K and Kaye and Auntie Barbara and whether you call your self Aunt or Auntie or Tante or ...

tante or tatie - French
hindi  - Aunty
thea - Greek.
tia i- Spanish
姑母 - Chinese
nagynéni - Hungarian
tetka - Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian
teze - Albanian
عمة , خالة - Arabic
hala, teyze, yenge -Turkish
makcik - Malay
teta - Slovene, Czech, Slovak, Lithuanian
тётя - Russian
bibi - Indonesian
zia - Italian
tia - Portuguese
леля - Bulgarian
tante - Danish, Dutch, Latvian, Norwegian, German
faster, tant - Swedish
דּוֹדָה - Hebrew
täti - Finnish
ciotka - Polish
mătuşă - Romanian
น้า, ป้า, อาผู้หญิง - Thai
amita - Latin
خاله , عمه - Persian
Modryb i- Welsh.
khal'ti - Arabic
obasan or oba - Japanese
meemeh - Yiddish

.. we now have a community to call our own. In fact, I love what Melanie has done so much with Savvy Aunties that she asked me to be on the Advisory Board.

Want to know more about the back story? Eric Kuhn, The Huffington Post, has a great interview with Melanie. 

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» Women and the Web: Savvy Auntie Gets My Attention from Lip-Sticking
Andy Sernovitz's new (not really 'so' new) blog, Damn I Wish I'd Thought of That! , says it best. I'm talking about the buzz around the net for Savvy Auntie. Huffington Post is buzzing it; Toby Bloomberg is buzzing it; and a Google search already turns... [Read More]

Tracked on Jul 15, 2008 9:28:46 AM

Comments

Thanks for the kudos but you were always going to be a great aunt-I just told you how a little viciousness could make it fun for Jessica, Scott...and you! It's so long overdue to have a site devoted to aunts-in all their different versions. Melanie will be fortunate to have you on the board. LYM...Polli

Posted by: polli on Jul 15, 2008 6:49:16 PM

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