Frankly, I was a little intimidated. The subject -- the future of the Internet, for crying out loud -- is the kind of trick question I always say no one can answer, given technological evolution and the diversity of human behavior online. But it's not every day that my work at BlogHer allows me to get publicly fired up -- and choked up -- about what I read and see on your blogs. And they cannot talk about the future of these Interwebs without crystal ball-gazing about the majority of its users (yep, women).
For all our differences as bloggers and women, there's growing power and emotion at the core of what we blog, I believe, and as I see individual bloggers' confidence in themselves and their opinions growing every day, it's pretty stunning. And a damn good reason to go to work every morning.
Below I share a copy of what I typed up for the talk -- what I actually said was captured by Steve Garfield, a terrific vlogger who streamed the talk live via his cellphone, people. You can watch it here. Next week, Berkman will have another video up here.
Here goes -- because I really want to know what you think of what I said, and what I missed:
First, I'd like to congratulate the Berkman Center on its tenth anniversary. It's an honor to be invited to speak on this occasion, given the center's work to embrace and protect participatory media for every user. Thank you for what you do.
When Amar Ashar asked me how I wanted to approach your anniversary topic, "The Future of the Internet," I suggested sharing some learning from a community I accidentally started with two other bloggers about how presidential candidates and consumer brands are helping and hurting themselves with women online.
In 2005, my partners Elisa Camahort, Jory Des Jardins and I came together to have a grassroots meet-up called BlogHER in response to a question that needed to die: "Where are the women bloggers?" Three years later, nobody asks that question anymore. Women who blog are ubiquitous and BlogHer is now a company that reaches more than eight million people a month via our publishing network of more than 1,400 blogs. One of these blogs is BlogHer.com, a community journalism site where 60 editors and more than 23,000 members blog and comment about what's hot among women who use social media.
Today, BlogHer provides a front-row seat to what I can only call revolutionary change, specifically: How participatory media are activating and changing the most powerful consumers in the world -- American women. I'm sure many of you know the statistics, so I will only briefly recap: American women control 83 percent of household spending, including cars and electronics, about $5 trillion a year. You can only expect that purse to get bigger, since women save the most, get higher rates of return on our investments and represent the majority of people graduating with professional degrees across nearly all disciplines. Because women represent 51 percent or so of the population, we're also the majority of users online. Since about 2006, women have been just as likely as men to write and read a blog.
Women's blogs are a huge turning point for the future of the Internet. Once a woman has a blog, she's just moments from using any number of social media technologies, typically Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook -- that order varies by a woman's age. Women who blog are 7x more likely to use social networks to reach out to friends and 4x more likely to text message than other women online; Women who blog are 30 percent more likely to shop online than other women online and spend more when we do, and even our shopping is social. How social? 56 percent of BlogHer's readers say they have purchased a product at the recommendation of another blogger and 62 percent say they have recommended a product or service from their blogs. You don't have to just take our word for it -- take Nielsen's. Nielsen Netratings officially attributed a ten percent drop in morning show viewership alone to women choosing to read and comment on parenting blogs alone.
Here's my point for the future of the Internet: What women say online is evolving both because of the new social technologies at our disposal and because of the validation and confirmation women are receiving from other women using social media. With social media, we are no longer restricted to stealing minutes and telephoning our three best friends between work, the commute, a social life and, ultimately for many, a family to tell them our opinion. With social media, we act -- we tell the world with a few keystrokes, on our blogs and social sites. And, lo and behold, the world acts back -- the very same world in which women have never achieved parity on op-ed pages or in public office.
So what does positive reinforcement beget? More action. This is the opportunity in front of us with women online. I say "act" not "write" deliberately -- today women are using blogs and social sites in a way that extends far beyond the "blog as personal printing press" metaphor. I'm talking about behavioral evolution. Which can be good and bad if you're trying to get the support of these women. If you strike the right nerve, you will be rewarded, as Dove's Real Beauty campaign was when they launched a time-elapsed video on YouTube showing a normal woman being morphed into an unattainable super model. More magazine earned kudos when Jamie Lee Curtis stripped down to her underwear, sans makeup, and revealed a real 40something woman. Brawny built a hilarious site around a fictitious male hero who instantly solves a woman's problems, just like Brawny's product, and earned hearts and flowers from many women who put it up on YouTube and sent it to my in-box.
And this action women are blogging is certainly not just commercial -- philanthropy and political action are the name of the game for women online, this year more than ever, and I realize many people at Berkman are involved with such pioneering efforts as Global Voices Online and the Sunlight Foundation. I'm talking, however, about bloggers in what consumer marketing experts might consider very different fields. I'm talking about food bloggers, led by Chez Pim, who have for four years now raised thousands of dollars for children internationally by raffling their advice and expertise through the Menu for Hope. I'm talking about Momocrats.com, a site started by a group of moms who blogged originally in support of John Edwards but now have grown to embrace a group discussion by Democrats, Independents and (I believe) even a few Republicans who are blogging the election. And through BlogHer and other sites, many women have invested time in the past year to blog and telephone Congress in support of the Mothers Act, Senate Bill 3529, legislation aimed at funding research into postpartum depression and ensuring that new mothers and their families are educated and cared for. Women blogging this initiative know the names of its backers, Senators Menendez and Durbin and we won't forget them.
These are wins in the bloghersphere, just a few examples of how, if you strike the right tone, women will reward you, your issue, your candidate, your product.
If however, you miscommunicate with women in this medium, you can damage your brand -- whether you're running for president or trying to sell coffee. Before we open up the discussion, I'd like to give you two examples from the past year of how brands have hurt themselves by failing to understand where women are going, both online and off.
One of my favorite examples is the response of the BlogHer community to the news that presidential candidates have continually declined to answer 12 policy questions developed by the BlogHer community. These questions are on four major areas: Health care, iraq, the economy and the environment. Since July, no candidate has accepted our offer of an on-camera videoblog interview by a blogger from their own party. Instead, we got two offers to feature candidate spouses -- both wives, not a potential first husband. The Barack Obama campaign began a grassroots outreach campaign called "Women for Obama" aimed at discussing policy and getting the vote out, and the Hillary Clinton campaign launched a new site of its own called "Moms for Hillary."
On this site, the Clinton campaign offered the opportunity to win a moms night out with two former social secretaries of Hillary's who would talk about the candidate's special family traditions and provide campaign schwag. Candidate Clinton's health care plan was the only public policy was linked from this site in December. Since then the site has since added education and the economy.
So, in December, I decided, who am I to turn down a potential first lady (or gentleman) without permission? We asked BlogHer's community about whether they wanted us to continue trying to talk with the candidates themselves or their families and supporters, or both. We also asked women for their opinion of these new Web sites. The response of the community was pretty overwhelming, via a poll, site comments and private emails. Nearly 65 percent of respondents said they wanted BlogHer to speak only to the candidates themselves, 29 percent were eager to have us interview both, and 2.6 percent said spouses and supporters.
As for the Moms for Hillary and Women for Obama web sites, 82 percent were either turned off by these efforts or had a recommendation to change them. 18.4 percent liked these sites.
While the survey comments we received are as diverse as the women who make up the majority of Internet users and American voters, across the board, bloggers who took the survey strongly urged candidates and campaigns to take women online "seriously" in the ten months remaining until Election Day and to stop "patronize" or "pander" to women voters.
Here are a few representative quotes:
"If you want to reach women, particularly moms, you have to come to them, especially online. By doing it "your way" i.e., on your own Web sites, you are doing your campaign a disservice. You show that you are out of touch with where women are and what they care about."
"I want to know where you as a candidate for president stand. Not where you think I want you to stand, but exactly what your opinions are on Iraq the economy, education and health care."
"Not all women are mothers or married, hello."
"Fine idea, poor execution. Do moms require exclamation points? Because I sort of thought we were interested in family-friendly social policy more than by exciting! nights! out! with our friends!"
What's so ironic about this example to me is that ever since Senators Clinton and Obama announced their candidacies within a week of each other in 2007, followed later by Sen. McCain and former Gov. Huckabee, I've seen women blogging with a great deal of excitement and interest in this campaign -- on food blogs and mommyblogs and My Space blogs where I have never before seen a single current event uttered. These are women outside the political blogging echo chamber, who are becoming engaged and excited about this election when they are able to have conversations with friends about it - not just receive and regurgitate messaging about it.
What's more, given the opportunity to engage in a civil disagreement and fierce debate about even the most heated topics, women will do so IF the right environment is created. BlogHer has helped our community agree to disagree -- AND to find common ground -- about abortion (pro-life and pro-choice), embryonic stem cell research, gender and race. Yet the candidates want to engage with an archetype of these voters and in a scenario where they carefully control the terms and the environment.
Another example, doubtless much better known, are the breastfeeding wars that tarnished Delta/Freedom Airlines, Starbucks and ultimately Facebook with women who blog. In each of these cases, the businesses at hand made the decision to ask breastfeeding women to leave their establishment, resulting in blogstorms, boycotts, feed-ins and a red-face for these brands.
The most recent of these is Facebook.
In September of 2007, as reported by Contributing Editor Mir Kamin, Facebook closed a woman's account and posted a note that stated:
Hi Karen,
After reviewing your situation, we have determined you violated our Terms of Use. Please note, nudity, drug use, or other obscene content is not allowed on the website. Additionally, we do not allow users to send threatening, obscene, and harassing messages. Unsolicited messages will also not be tolerated. We will not be able to reactivate your account for any reason. This decision is final.
Thanks for understanding,
Anthony
Customer Support Representative
Facebook
It did not go unnoticed that fraternity parties were being held to a different standard. Hypocrisy identified, a blogstorm ensued. Today, the facebook group "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene" has 38,853 members, and a blog, "Facebook sucks" which you can find at www.leagueofmaternaljustice.com/. That's not just a blown commercial opportunity, Facebook immaculately conceived its own ex-customer vendetta.
Again, what a shame. As soon as Facebook opened up to those of us outside the college years, women who blog were all over it. These are women who were looking for a latter day yearbook, a virtual ladies room wall on which to write each other -- especially one that helped them reach out to their male readers and friends as well. In the case of moms who blog, you're talking about a constituency for whom the Internet and our blogs are a lifeline -- we expected to have to silence our own voices in order to give our children theirs. But the blogosphere set us free. To be rejected for what among many women is considered a massive accomplishment, to be told what you are doing is obscene after nine months of work and finally getting your little baby to stop screaming and eat, and after you've invested what little spare time you have left in a profile on this community? While selectively ignoring kegger fare?
Oops.
There are a few lessons I take from this, and then I'd love to hear your thoughts.
First, let's pause and reflect that, ten years ago, the Berkman Center did not exist and the status quo opinion I heard when I left CNN and joined Women.com was "women will never go online." It's nice to have that out of the way.
Now, let's look at the numbers. Women's interests and behaviors do not fit into discrete pink and purple silos -- the domestic diva, the soccer mom, the Sex and the City single, all labels I've seen applied to women at one point or another -- these are not keeping up with the social media times. Women online today are as interested in discussing our choice of a candidate as we are our choice of a blogging platform as we are our choice of dog food and our choice of money market account.
The problem is not women online -- we're perfectly comfortable with all our personalities. The problem is, all too often, applying decades-old ingrained behaviors and techniques for messaging and selling, and mixing these archaic approaches with stereotypes of female interaction. All of which falls flat when sprayed out via new technologies. The result leaves money, political change, brilliant thinking, and technological innovation on the table. We can't afford to lose the support of these women.
Let's change that. And let's start by taking the advice of women who blog. Forget push media, direct-mail, precinct-walking, phone banking and now inane Twitter messages from candidates. Instead, let's build on town-hall meetings and have true voter-to-voter conversations where candidates can cut out the middle-woman and go straight to the voter and anyone selling something can go direct to the consumer! Here are four main themes that emerged from our voter survey, and I think they apply as well to consumer brands as to presidential candidates:
- Reach out to established women's online networks - don't create new ones. Reach women where they already are going.
- Stop marketing to women, start talking with women. The methods you have for doing this will change with the technology. How about hiring women from the community to teach you how to do this with respect and authenticity?
- Don't separate women out as moms or singles or (worse) a single monolithic block that thinks or votes or buys alike. Sex, style, parenthood and politics live and work side by side in our brains and our wallets. Don't archetype us. Work with us to find common ground. Or you'll lose votes and dollars.
- Meet the new so-called women's issues. Today: Health Care, Iraq, Economy, Environment. Tomorrow, we are a natural constituency for the kinds of issues that matter to the Berkman Center -- net neutrality, for the First Amendment, for a bloggers' bill of rights, for journalism shield laws. We should use this power.
But first, we need to get back to the basics. I think we need to start by addressing a classic question. Is it, "What do women want?"
No.
Is it, "Women, what do you want?"
Better.
How about, "Hi, would you like to have a conversation about what you want?"
That is the question.
And we have the technology.
Thanks.
Okay, tell me -- what did I get right? What did I miss? What would you add? I'd love to read your comments here.
For those of you in Boston and interested, Berkman@10's next lecture in this series will be given by Larry Lessig, who is CEO of a little thing called Creative Commons. More here about the speaker series.
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