Christine

Do Women Care More About Social Networks?

Interesting snippet of the day: Auren Hoffman recently blogged about the growing imbalance between male and female participation in social networks. To boil it down, the most popular social networking sites - Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Plaxo, and Hi5 - are roughly 60:40 female:male. Auren theorizes that the sole exception, LinkedIn (61% male) has the reverse skew because it is highly transactional, unlike the other networks. I can see his point.

Rapleaf calculated the study based upon analysis of its (surprisingly large) user base of 13.2 million, so of course there's a large caveat here that we don't know what Rapleaf's own gender skew is. e.g., if women care more about reputation - and given social norms, it's entirely possible that they do - then these numbers will be off. Your thoughts?

Web 2.0 Maintains Rate of Women's Participation

Environment: The sold-out Web 2.0 Summit held in San Francisco this month, hosted by O'Reilly Media and CMP Technology.

Silicon Valley Summit Skews Low on Women

Environment: The Deal and Tech Confidential's 2006 Silicon Valley Summit.

DEMOfall Increases Women's Participation by 25%

Environment: DEMOfall 2006, my favorite product launch conference, due to tremendous company selection and hosting by Chris Shipley.

Growing Numbers of Women at FOO Camp

Environment: FOO Camp, hosted by Tim O'Reilly at the gorgeous O'Reilly Media campus in Sebastopol.

Forbes Says: "Don't Marry Career Women!"

Through an entirely roundabout path - an e-mail from a woman that I don't know, but who is also on the Google Group for my pal Chris O'Brien's kiddie blog - I received a link and rant on a new Forbes article by Michael Noer entitled "Don't Marry Career Women." Go ahead and read it. Here's an excerpt: "Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career."

Caterina Fake and Meg Hourihan Share Flickr, Blogger Lore

Did you know that two of Web 2.0's biggest success stories - Flickr and Blogger - were never meant to be? Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, and Meg Hourihan, co-founder of Pyra Labs and Blogger, shared tantalizing tales of hard work and serendipity with Marnie Webb of NetSquared at the recent BlogHer conference:

Facing Challenges of Multiple Identity

The concept of identity has been increasingly topical in the technology space. But as individuals, do we have the self-awareness and maturity of behavioral psychology necessary to take advantage of this smarter infrastructure? Maria Niles of fizz moderated an extremely dynamic discussion of race, gender, sexuality, and identity at BlogHer 2006:

Making Room for Men at BlogHer

Environment: Blogging extravaganza BlogHer 2006.

Political Blogging for Fun, Change, and Disreputability

As Lisa Williams said today at BlogHer 2006, "bloggers are all self-publishers, and are disreputable for that very reason." Williams herded a gaggle of those disreputable political bloggers today, and revealed the very individual face that bloggers have brought to both global and local politics:

BlogHer Ad Network Launches

The BlogHer ad network launched this month, with the release of BlogHerAds. (Keep an eye on Lisa Stone's blog for the launch of the full site next week.) Here's a closer look at this effort towards an economically viable market model for blogging:

Men Like Mashups

Environment: Mashup Camp 2, hosted by the ever-fabulous David Berlind and Doug Gold at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Video Babes at Vloggercon

Environment: Vloggercon in San Francisco. 

The Women Come Out for NetSquared

Environment: The NetSquared Conference in San Jose, sponsored by CompuMentor and TechSoup.

Audrey MacLean on Best Practices for Angel Investing

Renowned angel investor Audrey MacLean explored the nuances of angel investing with the audience at yesterday's Women's Angel Colloquium. MacLean, a founder of both Network Equipment Technologies and Adaptive, revealed that her role as private investor was an accidental byproduct of her career in the computer industry.

Susan Wojcicki on the Secrets of Google's Success

There was a brief glimpse into Google's early days at the First Annual Women's Angel Colloquium in San Francisco, hosted by the Women's Technology Cluster. Susan Wojcicki, the VP of Product Management from Google, shared lessons learned, along with the odd idiosyncracy:

Wireless VentureChicks

Environment: The Wireless Ventures 2006 conference in San Jose, hosted by Dow Jones/VentureWire.

Identity Women

Environment: The Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View, organized by Kaliya Hamlin, Doc Searls, and Phil Windley.

Venture Chicks at the NVCA

Environment: The 2006 NVCA Annual Conference in San Francisco, sponsored by the National Venture Capital Association.

Responses for the VentureChicks

There's been some interesting feedback on the recent search for female investor-bloggers. Thanks to Matt Marshall, Kirsten Osalind, and Anne Zelenka for chiming in on the topic. Though I've got to say...there have to be more than three of us. Um...doesn't there? I will continue to maintain the list, so please do comment with any more suitable blogs that you find.

Where the Girls Are: N-TEN's 2006 NTC

Environment: The 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in Seattle, sponsored by N-TEN.

VC Girl-Watching

I've been noting the apparently long-standing hullabaloo over the women at Etech, and thought it would be interesting to look for blogs from venture capital women for a change. Here's where I looked, and what I found:

Are the Girls at VON?

Environment: Spring 2006 VON in San Jose.

Women at O'Reilly Etech

Environment: The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (Etech) in San Diego.

Linda Stone on Life, People, and Attention

Linda Stone hypothesized at O'Reilly Etech today around the phenomenon of continuous partial attention. It's a way of life for many (especially those who may read this blog post), and it means that we give the same priority to multiple things at once. We get as many things done as we can, at one time. Continuous partial attention means keeping a top-level item in focus, and always being aware of what else might come up as something more important in that specific moment. We're motivated to be a part of many things, an essential node on the network. We allow ourselves to be interrupt-driven.  This fits into a larger set of patterns: