BabyCenter, home to such coveted tools as an online ovulation calculator, has taken its first steps in the Web 2.0 world by acquiring Maya’s Mom, a social network for parents. The companies announced the deal Tuesday.

Johnson & Johnson-owned BabyCenter is a Web 1.0 company that provides advice, information, and ecommerce services for new and expectant parents. Though the company launched a redesign of the site last week, both BabyCenter and ParentCenter (a sister site that takes moms through year nine of child-rearing) have done little—beyond message boards and chat functions—to encourage users to contribute content.

That’s one reason Tina Sharkey, who took over as BabyCenter’s chairman earlier this year, was brought on. Prior to joining BabyCenter, Ms. Sharkey led AOL’s social networking and instant messaging initiatives and co-founded iVillage. She said the acquisition of Maya’s Mom will help make BabyCenter a Web 2.0 company as it becomes more of a social networking destination for mothers.

BabyCenter will use the technology from Maya’s Mom as a white-label platform for social networking on the BabyCenter and ParentCenter sites, which combined pull in more than 6 million monthly visitors, according to the company. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, BabyCenter was the leader in the family resources destination channel with 3.3 million unique visitors in July, though MyFamily.com beat BabyCenter in user engagement by nearly two minutes.

Ms. Sharkey said she selected Maya’s Mom’s architecture and technology over other white-label social network providers such as Ning and KickApps because it is more nuanced toward parents.

“Moms are constantly going in and out of different modes,” Ms. Sharkey said. For example, sometimes parents will want to be able to sort information and find other members by zip code to arrange play groups; other times they may want to search and interact around specific topics, such as tantrums or colic. Maya’s Mom “built a social network with features and functionality specifically tailored to moms and what moms want to share. And its nuance makes all of the difference in the world,” said Ms. Sharkey.

Maya’s Mom was founded late last year by Ann Crady, who previously ran business development for Yahoo Autos, an enthusiast site. Ms. Crady will join BabyCenter as a senior vice president and Maya’s Mom will continue to operate as a separate site as it becomes the first affiliate in BabyCenter’s just-launched affiliate network. Ms. Sharkey said BabyCenter’s affiliate program will be similar to that of Glam Media, which operates a network of online publishers.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.