So we were able to convince our good friends over at Schmoozd that our members are just too cool to pay the ticket price to attend their March 25th event @ Wokcano, Santa Monica and not surprisingly — they agreed!!

Join us in if you are in the LA area for a Schmoozd event, with, ahem, complimentary drinks by Media Temple, from 6PM - 10PM. 

MEMBERS can send a private message to Editrix Gina Mom on SmakNews.com or tweet her @smaknews for the “password” that’ll waive your ticket price for this event.

Oh, and we’ll also be doing some fabulous give-aways and announcements at the event for early arriving guests.

See you all there!

We have a lot to be thankful for this year, but if we had to keep it short and sum it up at the dinner table, here are the top few reasons — as of late — that sticks out most to us.

We are simply most thankful for…

1. The girls of Powder Room Talk

The lady owners of a “cyber (powder) room chat” blog are fierce and fiesty when it comes to submitting some scandalous (as in, juicy - not trashy) content all over SmakNews.  We especially thank you ladies for writing about: How Women Should NOT Pay On The First Date, Why We Love Bitches, Why We ALSO Like Porn And Threesomes, and whether we feel the BULGE is hot or not.

2. Josh Stomel, Chief Strategist of SmakNews

Founder of ResumeBucket.com and NeoHire.com, Josh just loves two-named start ups to be apart of it seems, and we are more than lucky to have one of  THE most connected (and quite buff, too) guy from the west side on our team. Catch him on the fly talking smak and be sure to ask him what “meat gazing” really means.

3. The wonderful ladies blog known as YourTango

We know it’s not just us who find something just awe-strucking awesome about YourTango.com, we just simply can’t put our finger on it. We’re thinking it could have something to do with the ridiculous relationship spoof known as the Spat Solver… or because this foreign guy teaching us how to make a sex video sounds pretty hot.

4. Twitter

Twitter has continued to give us SO MANY reasons to be thankful for. Not only did we ring in our 5,000th update to an amazing set of 40,000- something followers, but we have gotten to meet up “IRL” (in real life) with some outstanding characters at the #140conf, then we were able to co- host our first local Tweetup with this one particular social media ho, and we somehow got the extremely beautiful Alyssa Milano to Re-Tweet our story!

Oh Twitter, you make eating turkey this Thanksgiving so hard…

5.  Zedd Malam, CTO of SmakNews

The genius science and engineering of SmakNews is all due to this overly-worked man in the Ukraine. Zedd, we are thankful for you. And we are thankful for Zedd’s understanding girlfriend too for allowing us to keep him up with sleepless nights. If you were here, you’d both get a piece of our pumpkin pie!

6. Chelsea Talks Smak, contributing writer

Chelsea is a natural at “talking smak” — just look at her blog – it’s even in the title BEFORE we hired her! Therefore when coming on board to the team just earlier this month, we couldn’t be happier to be so fortunate in having her on our team, producing some very viral articles such as this month’s biggest hit: The Top 10 Hottest Men To Follow On Twitter, which even Comedy Central decided to link to…

7. Lindsay Lohan, best supplier of smak-able content … OF ALL TIME!

We secretly love and thank the birth of Lindsay Lohan onto this world. Without her antics, her whacked out family members (a Dad that records every private conversation, an almost equally awful Mom, a geriatric dressed Sister), and her on-going drama with whether she’s a lesbian or whether she killed Heath Ledger or not, we just want to be most thankful to Lindsay for always making our job SO much easier.

Now it’s been lovely taking our time out to thank those that really matter to us, but our turkey is waiting for us — and just like Lindsay, we sympathize with cutting just about anything cold turkey now…

Happy Thanksgiving.

Forgive us for the long gap in updating this beloved blog… we’ve been keeping busy (tremendously busy!) with some exciting plans that we’ll soon be rolling out shortly for our “2.0 Release.”

SmakNews endorses Shareaholic - the biggest FireFox plugin for sharing things on the web. We advise any Wordpress women blogger out there to install our “Add-To-Any” plugin and add us as one of the sharing option for easy convenience.

Who can believe that just one month ago, SmakNews.com came alive?

Since launching in Beta some 31 odd days or so, we have a lot to be thankful for, a lot to be proud of, and a lot (still) to look forward to. Our entire team have poured some Springtime sweat over building SmakNews, something we all would formally consider as only a part-time occupation (some would even say an internship-like learning experience) but for those still remaining, and still sweating, SmakNews has blossomed into what we know now as our full-time passion.

Being able to do something just because you love it (and believe in it) is definitely not as easy as having to do something because you’re told to and know you’ll receive compensation shortly for it.

But we do it, and we keep on trucking just because of our users. Capping at almost 500 activated profiles within the first month of a “soft launch” and with a growth rate that promises more to come each day, many of us would like to believe that we can’t stop working until we satisfy our mission in pleasing our direct supervisors: our users.

We’re going to be launching SmakNews version 2.0 very soon, and with that, we’ll be unveiling some amazing new stuff–all because we feel like giving back and making it much more fun to “talk smak” on here. We’re asking for everyone’s on-going feedback and support (meaning, we’re taking requests!) and hope that with our new upgrade, you’ll constantly want to stay on, invite more friends, and enjoy having a good time on here.

From the bottom of our smak-talking hearts, we thank you for the support, the love, and the growing interaction that proves just how worth this entire experience has been for all of us.

Thank you,

Xx Smaks xX

I can’t believe it’s been almost a week (tomorrow) since our beta launch!  And what an exciting week it has been.

As with all beta launches there are bugs and issues to iron out… and although we diligently tried to catch and correct all issues, some had escaped our attention.   As we continue to make SmakNews what we know it can be - we would like to take a moment and say thanks…

To thank them for helping us out.  To thank them for being the “pioneers” if you will, of SmakNews.

They have submitted some interesting and informative stories, as well as engaging “smak talk”.  We look forward to reading more of their submissions and conversations.

To missmissea, kwindchy, AbsolutelyTrue and jeanettewahduffy:   you ladies rock!  We here at SmakNews say, “thank you!”

Sincerely,

The SmakNews Team

SmakNews just raised its first round of funding from Founders Fund -$5 million. 

More details on this awesome deal to follow within the upcoming week.

We will be launching our highly attractive software on April 5th (this Sunday) in private beta– if you who haven’t signed up yet, please do so by visiting SmakNews.com.

Thank you all for the support! We wouldn’t have done it without you

–
Editor’s Note: Thank you all for being a great sport during our April Fool’s online jokery. Sadly to report, we did NOT receive such funding, but we are happy to know so many of our fans were so quick to congratulate us… and somehow, the joke even prompted one blog to report on us.

Ok, now we hope you get to see what all the “smak” talk is about for yourself, as we are counting down to our beta launch today — in less than 2 hours!

We’ve been written up a couple times lately:

Today, personal finance blog WalletPop wrote about us. Check it out here.

And a couple weeks ago, yours truly wrote a post for Social Media Mom about our li’l ol’ site. You can read that here.

In thinking about how I was going to describe SMAK News to you, our first visitors, inexplicably the 1970s commercial for Enjoli perfume kept popping up in my head.

If you’re GenX, you know the one:

“I can bring home the bacon/Fry it up in a pan/And never ever ever forget you’re a man/’Cuz I’m a woman…”

It’s sorta silly, I know. And ever so very ’70s.

But in its own weird way, it kind of sums up SMAK News – once we launch March 18, we aim to be the spot on the web for women. For the women who work – at home or outside of it; for women who love to cook and bake – or order takeout; for women who love their man (or woman) – or are happily single; for, well, the female gender.

OK, so this is the deal: We’re one part LiveJournal, one part Digg, one part Facebook and all woman.

You’ll be able to submit your favorite stories and blog posts – from your own blog, The New York Times or anywhere in between. You can vote on other people’s submissions, too. Vote how you want to – and explain why, if you’d like.

Even better, you can start your own blog here on SMAK News and share it with the new friends you’ll make here.

SMAK News is divided in two sections – “Celebrity Smak” and “For Her.”

If you are dying to know the latest on Brangelina, need to find out the latest Hollywood starlet who’s been knocked up or just want to see photos of your favorite stars at play, peruse the news in the Celebrity section.

Like your news celeb-free? Check out For Her, where you can find and share news about anything – from men and shopping to parenting and technology.

So sign up today, tell your friends and come back March 18 and start blogging, submitting and voting away.

And, if you prefer less pink in the site, please let me know in the comments. You’ll find a sympathetic ear.

— Amy Vernon
VP/Marketing, SMAK News