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Exploring the Web as a New Medium of Communication
WIRED Women: Who Are They?
By Debbie Weil
Sept 96, No. 1
PLENTY
OF ’EM
Keying "Women on the Web" into AltaVista
brings up 300,000 matches. The first ten
links include Women’s Studies, several
women’s health sites, Wharton Graduate
Women in Business and a site called Husky
Hardcores... which is not what you think.
It’s a pointer to an informative
site about women and athletics at U Conn.
(If you key in "Babes on the Web," the
term elicits about 7,000 matches. But
we’ll leave that subject for another
day.)
Suffice it to say that women are flocking
to the Web - and for many different reasons.
If you key "women on the web" into Yahoo’s
search engine, the results are neatly
sliced into Society and Culture: Gender:
Women. But you can also find scores of
Web sites maintained by women under Yahoo’s
subheadings Business & Economy and Web
& Internet.
CAN’T
CATEGORIZE ’EM
In a word, the initial statistics suggesting
that the Web and the Internet are primarily
of interest to white males are not only
misleading, they’re wrong. Women.Online,
a conference held in Washington D.C. in
November, 1995, drew a healthy attendance
of several hundred. (Sponsored by The
Kelsey Group, the conference, unfortunately,
is not archived on the Web.)
Speakers ranged from the expected feminist
leaders to Web marketeers on the cutting-edge
of technology. They included Eleanor Smeal,
former president of NOW
and current president of the Feminist
Majority Foundation; Nancy Evans,
president of iVillage;
and Mark Phelan, executive vice president
of CheckFree.
There were representatives (male and female)
from Viacom,
Time
Warner, MasterCard
International, Price Waterhouse, and
other heavy-weight corporations representing
advertising, publishing, and cable, all
with interests in the "women’s online
market."
THERE’S
THE RUB
But there’s the rub. There is no
"women’s online market" - unsegmented,
clearly defined, easily tappable - just
as there is no single "men’s market."
Dozens of Web sites are maintained by
women to promote a variety of feminist
causes. A small sampling includes WomenZone,
Sista Power, Girl
Power, WomenSpace
and Cybergrrl,
creator of Webgrrls and organizer of Webgrrls
Expo ’96, coming up Tuesday, Oct.
22 in New York City.
And there is the grandmammy of women’s
sites, Women’s
Wire - which, IMHO, is one of the
best sites on the Web, period, with its
snazzy design and intriguing blend of
news and features, profiles and health
info, comics and "Backtalk" section.
But there are also a number of media-savvy
women using the Web and the Net to promote
products or services, to communicate,
and above all, to make money. These women
are _wired_ but they don’t consider
themselves feminists or grrls or whatever
Web-fem label you want to use. US
News Online had an interesting article
on "women frequenting the Internet" in
the News You Can Use section of the magazine’s
July 1st issue. You can read it by keying
7/1/96 into the search engine.
WIRED
FOR SUCCESS
One example is Rosalind Resnick, who describes
herself - rather modestly - as an Internet
author and entrepreneur. "I always say
that the three things that sell in cyberspace
are sex, money and sports," opines Resnick
in a recent telephone interview, speaking
in her understated way.
It just ain’t so, she says, that
entrepreneurs can’t make money on
the Web. "Often what seem like technological
impossibilities are just cultural and
business barriers to be overcome," she
says quietly.
Resnick, 37, is the president of NetCreations,
Inc., a Brooklyn, N.Y. Internet software
and marketing company, one of whose creatons
is Postmaster,
a high-end Web site announcement service.
She numbers IBM, AT&T and Intel among
her clients.
Another of NetCreations’ ventures
is PostDirect,
a targeted direct email service. "It’s
not spamming," she explains. "We do it
in a politically correct way. We have
about 2 million email addresses which
we can slice and dice into over 1,000
lists by subject area - from scuba diving
to yoga to Web designers." NetCreations
rents out the lists for 10 cents a name.
She is also the publisher of the twice-monthly
business-to-business newsletter, Interactive
Publishing Alert. The subscription-based
publication, available both via email
and in hard copy, sells for $395 annually
to what Resnick calls a targeted audience
"with a lot of disposable income."
And last, but not least, Resnick is the
former NetGirl, the cyber-relationship
"sexpert" who helped America
Online launch one of its most successful
(i.e. oft-visited) forums in the company’s
online history. Divorced, she met her
10-years-younger boyfriend and NetCreations
business partner through email - and is
now living happily with him. If you want
to find out what you don’t know about
cybersex, read my online interview with
NetGirl (aka Rosalind).
Resnick recently severed her relationship
with AOL, however, to start a Web-based
site called LoveSearch,
over which she will have more control.
She describes it as "a branded front-end
to a personal database." The database
will be the "money-maker," she explains.Visitors
can either call a 900-number or send surcharged
email messages.
Not surprisingly, Rosalind Resnick makes
money - lots of it through her various
Web ventures. She declines to give out
a precise figure but admits that "this
year from IPA (Interactive Publishing
Alert) I’ll probably make $80,000."
In her pre-entrepreneurial life she was
a business reporter for The
Miami Herald. After the birth of her
first daughter in 1989, she became a freelance
writer making "$10,000 a month." On an
annualized basis, she now expects to make
several times that amount.
BRANDED
CONTENT SELLS
Resnick sees the same void on the Internet
in late ’96 that she saw about a
year-and-a-half ago on America Online.
This particular void is that of "branded
romance-related content" - hence the recent
launch of her new site, LoveSearch.
The concept of branded content is one
that she understands intuitively. "News
is ubiquitous. If you want people to pay,
you have to come up with something special,"
she says. "Selling news is like selling
ice to the Eskimos."
She points out that Knight-Ridder’s
New Media Center, Web central for the
media company’s 18 online newspapers,
has about 10,000 subscribers. "But look
at ESPN/SportZone,"
Resnick says. "They have 40,000 subscribers
paying $4.95 a month" for the privilege
of accessing subscription-only content
deeper on the mammoth site.
"I see myself as a wired person," says
Resnick - as opposed to a wired woman.
"Even my ex-husband and I communicate
by email and my daughter gets email from
the tooth fairy - anonymously, of course."
She looks forward to a day "when we don’t
need to have women’s groups, to compensate
for women’s lack of self-confidence."
FEEDBACK
I’d love to get some feedback from
E & P Interactive’s readers on the
subject of "Women on the Web." Do you
agree or disagree with the thesis that
wired women is too broad a category? Do
you plan to reach out to this broad and
multi-faceted audience ? Send me some
feedback - or raise a little hell. I must
have offended somebody with this column...
Write me at debbie@wordbiz.com.
Seeya
Debbie Weil is president of Wordbiz.Net, a Web site
consulting firm specializing in the design and organization
of content.
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This column
was originally written for Editor
& Publisher Interactive.
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