How to microblog in high heels

As part of my research for a feature on the Female Web, I spoke to Shiny Shiny founder, Katie Lee, about how hordes of tech-savvy women are bucking the trend and smashing the stereotype that women and technology do not mix.

Lee started the gadget website for girls Shiny Shiny in 2004 when she realised there were actually a lot of women who were interested in technology.

Working on a male-orientated laptop magazine at the time, Lee was inspired by the reaction of her female friends who would pester her to let them try out the new gadgets which came into the office.

“I felt strongly that gadgets should not just be for women interested in technology and know about them, but should actually be open to anyone,” she said. “They are more than just toys for geeks.”

Lee felt there were no outlets for talk about technology in women’s magazines. She pitched a ‘Gadgets for Girls’ section to Marie Claire, but was soon frustrated by the heavy editing of the regular feature.

“When I started writing about technology the idea that women were interested in gadgets had to be pushed every time,” she said. “I think the stereotypes still exist and there is still a lack of females working in technology because school-girls are still not taking IT and science subjects.”

But Lee believes attitudes towards technology are changing as the web becomes more social and conversational.

When she started Shiny Shiny she wanted it to be anti-stereotypical in its outlook – but the site is pink.

“The pink was an ironic statement at the start and I think that is clear. The website does not take itself too seriously and is not too complicated. It is written for women by women and not for people who actually care about algorithms and megabites,” she said.

“Male gadget websites are a bit cynical and all about being unimpressed with new technologies, where as Shiny Shiny is a bit of fun and a bit silly really.”

So do women really like Shiny Shiny things?

“I used to get asked this question all the time and my feeling is that actually men and women want the same thing. You rarely meet someone who fits the stereotype. The argument was women wanted small pink gadgets, and some do, but women love blackberries and always have done and they used to be really ugly.
“Women do not love technology just for the sake of it. If it offers an everyday use that is just as important as how it looks. But that is the same for men.
“There is a reason Apple have done so well. Other products just did not look as good. A simple good design and an obvious use are the things women go for.”

While Lee thinks many companies still need to grasp the idea of making women-friendly sites to latch onto the market of women who love technology, she does not agree women will dominate the web in the future and instead believes trends will be determined by the next generation.

“While the feminisation of technology is very obvious the point the internet will be full of women in the future is a strange one because in the end everybody will be on the net,” she said.
“It is the young people coming up who will decide whether we will all be using e-books. We thought MP3s would never catch on because people loved the artwork too much. But kids today don’t even think about artwork as we once did with CDs.”

While websites with a female slant are on the increase, the blogosphere remains dominated by men.

But concept of the Female Web means women can exercise their natural instinct to form close-knit communities online.

Visits to UK women’s lifestyle sites grew by 52.5 per cent in the last year. These communities form around topics of related interest, and the most successful clusters of women on the web surround the basic need to shop, preen, and bitch.

Glam.com, a fashion and celebrity site, sees 43 million visitors a month. Oprah.com and iVillage are also popular homing grounds – comScore and Media Matrix ranked the latter as the number one online destinations for women. CafeMom is one of the largest social networking sites for mothers and ranked the eighth fastest-growing website in 2007. Double X launched last month and sites like Jezebel attract almost 900, 000 readers worldwide.

But despite the wealth of women-friendly sites attracting a global female network, blogging remains a gender-imbalanced activity.
Fiona Handscomb (left), 30, an arts and lifestyle blogger in Birmingham believes despite the idea of Female Web, blogging is male in nature.

“Men are more competitive and better at self-promotion,” she said, “And better at saying ‘Look, I’ve written this amazing blogpost, everyone go and look at it,’ where as women are less like that. Blogging works by self-promotion and establishing yourself in an online hierarchy.

“Most of the blogs I read are written by men. There are thousands of female bloggers but they do not decide to be as high profile. The problem is the internet is now a very competitive place – people are always going on about web stats and self-promoting their blogs via Twitter.”

Mrs Handscomb believes by nature women should be more suited to blogging, but are deterred by its image and might not reach as high on Technorati’s top blogs list because they are less worried about stats.

“There is still the perception that blogging is for techy geeks which is off-putting for women. But women are darn good at blogging because its style is informal, chatty and conversational, which is naturally suited to women.

“Blogs written by men tend to be a little bit more factual and are really into social media so they constantly refer to or link to others. Women tend to blog more about life issues rather than the internet itself. I know there are lots of women who are into technology, but they tend to write about it in the context of life. For example, I was very interested in the increase of geo-tagging, so I wrote a blog on it, but looking more in general about why people were interested in their sense of place.”

Mrs Handscomb said some aspects of the web aren’t female at all because relationships via Twitter are not as intimate as in real life.

“The web is associative and that’s a female tendency. Social media is the largest function of the internet now and has surpassed email. But there is something quite destructive about it too. It is an unreal way of developing relationships. You can turn Twitter on and off, but you can’t just switch off relationships. Also, people aren’t always honest on the internet so you don’t get to the nitty gritty of people. People put themselves across a certain way on Twitter, but in real relationships people see the bad bits as well. The internet is not intimate and personal enough to be female.”

Read Fi’s blogs here:

http://blogs.birminghampost.net/lifestyle/fiona_handscomb/
http://westmidlandsdance.com/
http://www.whatsonstage.com/midlands

An interesting article in the BBC magazine today looks at the traditional ways MPs used to engage with the public to gauge their feelings about them and their policies. It highlights the need for MPs to better engage with their constituency and online communities to keep in touch with public feeling. Stephen Dowling and Finlo Rohrer say:

It can still sometimes prove difficult for politicians, and particularly those cloistered in the corridors of government, to keep up with the subtly shifting mood during a rapidly-developing event.

The simple fact is, in today’s world of rolling news it is easier than ever for those in positions of power to work out the public mood. Blogs, Twitter, online comments, website forums, youtube videos and even now the ability to view the mood of a city based on status updates, all mean any MP should easily be able to access the public opinion on a particular issue – and not just rely on indistinct polls. But research from the Hansard society in February showed only 23 per cent of MPs are actually using social media to get closer to constituents, and only 11 per cent of MPs have a blog.

Rob Marcus director of social networking moderation company, Chat Moderators, said:

Although engagement through social media can hold potential risks and be viewed as time consuming, many MPs still feel that they need to be participating in it but are unaware of the technologies available to them. This may be a reason why so few have actually used social networking as a communication tool in their campaigns. However, since Barack Obama’s level of online presence during the presidential election, many MPs are beginning to see what all the fuss is about.

Even the traditional basics of public engagement seem to be ignored by some MPs – I have never met my local MP and I suspect many others would say the same.

But this, surely, is one of the most fundamental requirements of being an MP of a constiuency. Of the 646 MPs rattled by “expensesgate,” how many know the current mood in their area, where they are supposed to have a second home. Does Jacqui Smith know people in Redditch feel disjointed from Birmingham and still unhappy about the increase in large roads which have violated the beauty of the area? Probably not, too busy cancelling orders for naughty videos to spice up her sex life perhaps.

Opinion polls still seem largely favoured, but can only give a broad stroke of feeling. A drop in three per cent of public favour will not give you nearly the same fervour as the rage felt in some blog posts on the expenses furore.

Lynne Jones, my local MP isn’t on on Twitter according to Tweetminster. Kevin McKeever (Lab) looks like a healthy regular Twitterer. Check out his recent entry which displays good tweet etiquette of being honest and adding something to the conversation:

And there are other examples of MPs trying to use social media to engage with the community. This green-blogging experiement last year. MPs only need to look at the success of the Obama campaign to see how valuable using social media could be for their campaign and to help them gauge the mood of their followers.

Public mood isn’t felt by national newspaper polls – it’s in real life and online too and MPs should embrace digital advances with full gusto to reach out to constituents. If they had done so sooner they may have felt the need to reform their expenses system a lot earlier.

In relation to my previous post which caused a few friends to ponder the significance of the Facebook relationship status feature, I thought this little video – in the top ten most blogged or posted this week – might add some enlightenment to the discussion (I particularly like the malicious uploading of photos from pre-ditching days. You go Alice).

Following the news Carol Ann Duffy has taken over from Andrew Motion, I thought I’d see what Duffy might offer the Queen based on her notoriously gag-some GCSE anthologised poem “Valentine”.

“Jubilee”

Not an English rose or a Lion’s heart.

I give you a cauliflower.
It is white fluff wrapped in gold leaf.
It promises nothing
like a carefully constructed speech.

Here.
It will blind you with diamonds
like a crown-topped ghost.
It will make your pallid reflection
an outraged photo walk-out.

I am trying to be royal.

Not an activist or charity mascot.

I give you a cauliflower.
Its tight-lipped profile will stay on your stamps,
archaic and traditional
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its overcoat withers to the floor
Or is made into statue.
Plaque.
Its memory will cling to history,
cling to your land.

As put by one fellow Twitterer – “Let’s hope she enjoys it more than Motion.”