Can One of Google's Ex-'Creative Maximizers' Make a Travel Site Fly?

Dorothy McGivney found her job at Google on Craigslist when she was 23 years old. The Long Island native worked for the Internet’s most influential company at their New York office for six years as a "Creative Maximizer," which meant she analyzed the ads that ran on Google and made them more effective. Eventually, she'd become a manager and represent Google in lectures and conferences, speaking about their products and ad strategies. But Ms. McGivney, now 30 years old, eventually realized she wanted to be her own boss, and Google was getting too big for her taste.

"[T]he New York office grew from 32 people to over 1500 during my tenure there,” Ms. McGivney wrote in an email to The Observer. "It was no longer the little startup where everyone knew each other's name. In fact, during one of my last months there, I attended a video conference going away party. Me and one other coworker sat in a New York conference room and watched people in Mountain View eat cake. It was awkward, hilarious and kind [of] a cue that it was time for me to leave."

Now Ms. McGivney is launching a new endeavor: Jauntsetter, a free, Daily Candy-inspired e-newsletter and travel site for New York women—with a little attitude to match. "I’d like to think that jauntsetter is more like Jezebel than Daily Candy, or I want it to be," she explained.

Issues are published (or, well, email-blasted) every Wednesday and include trip recommendations (like Windham in the Catskills or San Francisco), a short Q&A with a traveling, female New Yorker (The New York Times’ Jennifer 8. Lee), and a list of what Ms. McGivney considers the best airfare, hotel and package deals for city folks.

Ms. McGivney has plenty of experience on the road and in the air. After leaving Google, she took trips to Argentina, Japan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Eastern Europe. Ms. McGivney recalled trying to cross the street in a particularly hectic intersection in Vietnam when an elderly woman seemed to sense her fear and took her hand to help. "I have never felt so elated," Ms. McGivney said. "It was kindness distilled, and so funny—a little old lady, and she must have been about 80, at least, was helping me cross the street!"

She launched the site in late September and has been posting new issues ever since, updating the blog daily. Ms. McGivney says the Jauntsetter e-newsletter has 1,000 subscribers. Ms. McGivney brings in some of her own experiences while traveling (like in this post about cheap dining and bacon), and gives the site a girl-pal, chatty editorial voice that makes it easy to read. She also started a Facebook page, and worked with the Barbarian Group to make an application on the site that made it possible for Jauntsetter readers to create their own profile and bookmark their favorite sites and share their own travel stories and tips.

Jauntsetter is currently a one-woman operation, run by Ms. McGivney. Her office is located in a co-working space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that costs a few hundred dollars a month. She plans to keep the site ad-free for its first six months to create a voice, establish a brand and generate an audience. Then she’ll start wooing brands that will be able to make exclusive deals with Jauntsetter readers, sponsor issues, or buy ad space on the site. Like Daily Candy, she hopes to create versions for other cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and brach out into sites aimed at men.

Which all raises the question: Why create a travel publication while the industry seems to be in decline? In a statement, Ms. McGivney said she wants New Yorkers to start enjoying traveling again instead of expecting "nothing less than migraine-level pain when planning or taking a vacation."

"[N]ot taking a trip away from New York every once in a while—regardless of the dollar or economy seems pretty criminal to us... Additionally, if there’s any group interested in a much-needed getaway, it's New York women," she said.

"We do love this city (it's the best one on earth, right?) but we think it's imperative to leave it rather regularly. It's really only civilized.”