Social network for moms sees surge in users amid lockdown

Peanut, a London-based social network for mothers and mothers-to-be, is seeing a spike in engagement over the past few months as parents, mandated to stay at home with their children, look to balance work, home-schooling and an orderly household.

Since the stay-at-home orders were put in place by local officials across the nation in March, the Peanut app saw user engagement increase to 30% to 40% in content consumption. The number of users grew from one million in December 2019 to 1.6 million in 2020. “Women need to connect with one another,” Peanut CEO Michelle Kennedy told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move.

“The community we provide is more needed and probably more relevant than ever before,” said Kennedy, who previously served on the board of dating site Bumble.

“Whether that’s because they’re going through fertility treatments and they’re facing cancellations, whether that’s because they’re pregnant and they’re considering what’s going to happen for labor without their partners with them,” Kennedy said. “Whether you’ve just got kids at home like me and are desperately trying to run a business, work and deal with a six-year-old homeschooling.”

And as parents navigate their families through this uncertain time, there’s an overwhelming amount of information being thrown their way. So Peanut launched a “mute keyword” feature that lets users remove certain discussions from their feeds and notifications.

“We’re really, really focusing on what is it that the community wants to see and how can we build it quickly,” Kennedy said.

Peanut, a London-based social network for current or mothers-to-be, is seeing a spike in engagement over the past few months. (Courtesy: Peanut)

Peanut, which launched in 2017 initially as a way for moms to meet other moms, closed a $12 million Series A funding round let by EQT Ventures, all of which was done during lockdown, bringing Peanut’s total funding to $21.8 million.

“We were in a position where people were excited by the growth; they were excited by the engagement we were seeing and they were excited about the trajectory of where we want to go,” said Kennedy.

Brooke DiPalma is a producer for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeDiPalma.

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