

5 Reasons Why I Want Digg for Girls - estherschindler
http://www.heartlessdoll.com/2008/10/5_reasons_why_i_want_digg_for_girls.php

======
pavel_lishin
I'm a guy, and I couldn't care less about the NBA, Howard Stern, or James Bond
trivia without spraining something.

What exactly IS "girl stuff"? The article didn't mention a single example of
what a "girl link" is, except jokingly mentioning a few sexist ideas.

~~~
jsdalton
I'll give you my opinion here: It's not so much about the content, as it is
about the community that evolved around the content.

For me, Hacker News is a great example of this. Why do we need Hacker News
when we've already got Proggit (i.e. the Programming sub-Reddit)? Truthfully,
Reddit's social news technology is more advanced than HN, and there's a lot
more people and stories there. Right?

As you'll probably agree...no, not exactly. What sets HN apart (for now) is
that it's smaller, more serious, and arguably more intelligent than Reddit's.
I see the same links posted here as I do on Reddit; the key difference is the
conversations that ensue and in particular the tone of those discussions.

This is long-winded way of saying "girl stuff" isn't about having gossip and
fashion articles, but more about a culture evolving around those stories. I do
think that the male-dominated culture surrounding sites like Digg, Reddit, and
even HN can be off-putting to women.

~~~
Frabjous-Dey
I think you hit the nail on the head. Social news sites are only worthwhile
insofar as your interests and participation align with the interests and
participation of your peers on the site.

The author is really saying two things:

\- "I'm not interested in the articles that make the front page of Digg": a
terrific reason not to use Digg.

\- "If women had a Digg of their own, the articles on it would be much more
relevant to me." Probably somewhat true. But I know plenty of female geeks who
wouldn't give a shit about anything on weheartgossip or kirtsy.

The real goal here is to find a quality community that appeals to you.
Unfortunately, this is not all that easy: not only are most people morons, you
need a lot of people to be active in the same place for a social website to be
worth visiting.

~~~
jsdalton
I do think getting the communities to form is a challenge, and I think the
challenge is even more difficult amongst non-nerd demographics.

I actually set up a slinkset site, <http://www.bababase.com>, a few months ago
based on the very premise we're discussing, but I've had a tough time finding
a way to get traction amongst a non-nerd crowd! (Moms, in this case.)

~~~
dgabriel
Moms are _incredibly_ active on the web. All you need to do is get in with the
"Mommy Blogger" crowd, which is quite large and influential, and tends towards
activism.

iVillage is filled with moms, as are wahm message boards, etc., etc. Your
audience is there, and they want what you've got, I'm sure.

~~~
jsdalton
You're totally right, and I appreciate the encouragement actually.

I'm really not the world's most phenomenal marketer or community organizer. It
takes a lot of those two competencies to be successful in a social application
endeavor. :/

------
dgabriel
Hmm. As a girl, I _am_ interested in stuff like the following. My issues have
never been with links, but with idiotic commentary on links.

 _Instead, I'm stuck reading headlines like "Compressed Air Cars Coming To New
Zealand" and "New maskless lithography trick may keep Moore's Law on track."_

~~~
DaniFong
Digg commentary is at times, physically painful for me to read. Like someone
punched me in the gut. What stupidity and ignorance. What a cesspool.

What is it about certain internet places that make people so awful? Anonymity?
Or are there people actually that bad all around me, in real life, and I
simply don't notice?

~~~
dgabriel
I don't think these people really believe what they're saying, but it's very
easy to let the Id take over when your name and reputation aren't on the line.
All these young boys want to be the class clown, without the unfortunate
ramifications, and Digg is the perfect outlet.

I think this is why HN tends to be more civil and worthwhile -- you have
active editors, and most people use their real names as their usernames or in
their bios.

ps - her crack about compressed air cars must have really hurt...

~~~
DaniFong
Yeah, it did. "Screw the environment. Those things are only interesting
because of internet Male's bizarre fascination with them. Instead, let me
write about whether Barack Obama is anorexic?! That's what _real_ girls want
to hear about..."

Not going to let it keep me down, though. We just sent out a bunch of letters
to investors. Low and behold, we now have a pitch.

~~~
cgranade
Just who are these mythical girls that are only interesting in such tripe,
anyway? I've never met one...

~~~
DaniFong
I don't know many either. My theory is that the interests of many were formed
and set in cliques in high school, which I wasn't around to see. The few
people I know now who are interested in such things _also_ enjoy science and
technology and art.

You know the phrase 'six degrees of separation?' I feel like it must be at
least three or four. I have little to no contact with these people, even
though they're all around me. I felt similarly when I went to a baseball game,
once. Wow.

~~~
cgranade
I never went to high school, so I never really grokked that kind of clique
behavior. I mean, cliques can be good as they help us organize vast social
networks, but I've been told they go way overboard in that environment.

Even though I have never been to a sports game (excepting a Harlem
Globetrotters show, but that wasn't really a game), I kind of feel the same
way walking around my hometown of Fairbanks. The population is small enough
that I likely have no more than two or three degrees between myself and any
random stranger. It's a very odd feeling, and one that I've never gotten used
to.

------
Alex3917
I don't know how Slashdot did it, but "insightful / informative / interesting
/ funny" seem to be exactly the four qualities that can make a piece of text
good. If you either added a bucket or took a bucket away, the signal to noise
ratio would go down. At least from my perspective. But maybe women have
different buckets, or have a different optimal blend of how much should fall
into each bucket.

edit: My proposed mechanism for this is that the pattern matching in women's
brains is less strict than the pattern matching in men's brains (i.e. women
see patterns more easily), which for women blurs the line between interesting
and insightful. But I don't actually have any credible evidence to support
this, so take it for what it's worth.

~~~
mseebach
Successful niche forums/boards have a social contract that the participants
enforce on each other. The fact that you on HN need x1 points to vote comments
down, and x2>>x1 points to kill stories (and on Slashdot, the karma-system),
ensures that new members are accepted into the contract by peers based on
contribution.

In older times, boards had moderators, and admins picked out active members as
mods based on their performance.

But this model is susceptible to group-think, especially when a topic falls
outside the contract. It just happened here during the presidential election
that apparently the body of users are sufficiently politically diverse, that
intelligent, respectful debate prevailed over mindless up-voting of anything
adhering to one specific mindset. It could very well have went in the other
direction. It's absolutely no guarantee that you because someone make
insightful tech/startup comments, that he also is going to vote down a stupid
comment, even if it's in favor of his political POV.

Solving this problem; making sure that a community like HN can stay
intelligent, and not be diluted as it gains popularity, I think, is a very big
opportunity.

~~~
estherschindler
I, for one, miss the social contract. But then I was a CompuServe sysop by
1990, and ran several types of online discussion groups (including
ZDNet/AT&T's InterChange, which nobody else remembers). There was incredible
value in the people who owned a stake in the forum's success (particularly
anything vendor- or company-related) in choosing moderators who knew how to
create a balance between being <a
href="[http://advice.cio.com/esther_schindler/6_stupid_mistakes_com...](http://advice.cio.com/esther_schindler/6_stupid_mistakes_companies_make_with_their_online_communities)">both
barkeep and bouncer</a>\--not the least of which was a sincere welcome to the
community.

Even when I haven't been involved in running an online community, I've always
been a participant in several of them. And yes, some women need to feel "safe"
before they will come out of lurkerMode. (Obviously I am not in that set, but
I expect the woman who wrote the blog post to which I linked does count
herself among them.) For instance, I'm a member of two women-in-IT tech groups
(a general one and one specifically for web designers/developers, and believe
me, you can't shut them up). The whole notion of women-in-IT and its
reflection in online communities isn't going to go away just because some guys
(and some women, too) say, "But really, you don't need a separate space."

(As you can probably tell, this is a topic very close to my heart.)

------
0xdefec8
Forget girls; Digg ostracizes anyone who isn't a Male-Liberal-American-
ObamaSupporting-AppleLoving-WebDesigner.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
They make an exception for Ron Paul fanatics, oddly enough.

~~~
Dilpil
The Ron Paul fanatics make an exception for themselves.

------
ATB
Reddit had a spin-off called lipstick.com, which has now become
<http://www.weheartgossip.com/>

There's the 'OMG' reddit alien, replete with blond hair and lipstick:
[http://thumbs.reddit.com/t5_2qh3n_29.png?v=4v4n810ku3an8yqud...](http://thumbs.reddit.com/t5_2qh3n_29.png?v=4v4n810ku3an8yqud5egg2hzlsckf9jp0ztw)

Sadly, it falls into the category of 'what advertisers/editors think women
want in a social networking site.' Based on my own at-work experience with
somewhat/fairly geeky girls (not coders), tmz.com and perezhilton.com already
accomplish what lipstick/weheartgossip seek to do.

------
zearles
There IS a digg for girls: PrettySocial ;-)

<http://www.prettysocial.net/>

Seriously though, there are several such sites with different target groups:

PrettySocial (ours): for young women, focus is on fashion, beauty, health etc.
with lots of pretty pictures!

Kirtsy: for mothers and older women, coverage is more general

Boudica: it's a new site, the stories are a little random, but looks promising

------
ObieJazz
_...the site has a core userbase of boys who spend hours each day posting
stories and Digging stories posted by their friends._

The problem here is that a small core group of users is able to exert undue
influence on the site. If the ranking system on Digg were better balanced, its
featured stories would better represent the interests of its broader (and
presumably more gender-balanced) user base.

------
helveticaman
You can take the source code for hacker news, change the css around, and buy a
fitting domain name.

------
josefresco
Top Headlines from Digg right now:

Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam First Look at Johnny Depp-
Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland New honeycomb tire is 'bulletproof' If TV
Shows Had Truthful Titles Phil Gramm Has No Remorse Over Destroying the US
Economy Chinese pirates crack Blu-ray DRM, sell pirated HD discs Top 10
Unfortunate Political One-Liners 30 Rare & Expensive Gamecube Games New MythTV
Interface Preview Mark Cuban charged with insider trading.

Anyone see a male bias there? The Johnny Depp article would actually tip the
scales to the female side in my opinion.

~~~
ATB
Sure, I'll bite.

\- "Oregon Woman Loses 400k to scam" \-- Although it's a story about a woman,
I suspect that the vast majority of the 552 current comments are from men,
making rude, arrogant, or demeaning comments. Men braying like jackasses and
cracking puerile jokes about how dumb someone (a woman) is? What's not to
love?

\- "First Look at Johnny Depp" \-- Skews female

\- "New honeycomb tire is 'bulletproof'" \-- A story about car/bike technology
and guns/bullets. Not to feed any stereotypes here, fellas, but that
positively reeks of testosterone.

\- "If TV Shows Had Truthful Titles" \-- Sophomoric snark on the Internet
_can_ amuse both sexes, but tends to skew male. Perhaps because sophomoric
snark in general skews male. No offense intended.

\- "Top 10 Unfortunate Political One-Liners" \-- Obsessing over political
minutiae/sophomoric snark again, combined with a bit of political trivia? See
above. Or do you think that the relentless Ron Paul stories were also being
constantly up-voted by an enraptured female audience glued to whatever new
tidbit was coming from his camp?

\- "Phil Gramm Has No Remorse Over Destroying the US Economy" \-- See above.
This is a story that could be appealing to both men and women, but the puerile
slant to it makes it slightly less interesting to women, or so I've tended to
notice. Just like in Real Life, your hilarious political jokes just AREN'T
THAT FUNNY to most girls, y'know?

\- "Chinese pirates crack Blu-ray DRM, sell pirated HD discs" \-- DRM nerd
porn. There's no reason why this wouldn't appeal to women, but by and large,
the tone and thrust of the article greatly narrows its (male) audience.

\- "30 Rare & Expensive Gamecube Games" \-- Skews both older and to a more
rarefied hardcore/distinguishing gamer audience. Which is largely male. If it
said 'best Wii games' for instance, it wouldn't be so male-centric.

\- "New MythTV Interface Preview" \-- Nerd porn. See above.

\- "Mark Cuban charged with insider trading." \-- Nerd-slash-financial-slash-
sports porn.

Cue the inevitable comments how you're a woman and those stories _totally_
appeal to you. :-)

~~~
modoc
so... what do you think women who want to use a digg-esque website ARE into?

Most women I know are far more into snarky commentary/comedy than I am, and
are very interested in politics, the economy, and way more into tv than I am,
etc...

------
cabalamat
There's a web app (forget what it's called) that analyses the writing on a web
page and decides whether a man or woman wrote it.

So something like this could be largely automated, start off with a collection
of links then categorise them according to the text on the page and/or the
writing of the person linking to them.

~~~
Alex3917
<http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php>

It doesn't work well enough for what you're proposing though. The accuracy
(according to their blog) is roughly 50%, which is no better than chance.

------
geuis
There aren't even 5 points in the article. Just the same complaint "I don't
like Digg content" 5 times. She gives examples of what she doesn't like, but
at no point offers examples of the kinds of things she likes. Also, I'm
honestly not sure if the core group of women who would power a site like digg
would be very different than the guys on digg. There's roughly only 1% of digg
users submitting content. Would the 1% of women submit Martha Stewart or Steve
Jobs? I suspect the difference between the über geek girl isn't to far from
über geek guy.

------
sil3ntmac
<http://kirsty.com> (used to be called something else, I forget). They talked
about that site when I took a tour of the Houston Technology Center.

------
Dilpil
Of COURSE there is a digg for girls. In fact, of course there are 5. It's
disheartening to realize how much has already been completely done to death.

------
blurry
There _is_ Digg for girls:

boudica.com

~~~
josefresco
Two 'Random' Headlines from Boudica:

Jennifer Lopez wants another baby The other side of Angelina Jolie

Granted those were 'cherry picked' to make my point, but this Girl-Digg site
seems like the same stuff you'd see inside the popular glossy and rather
crappy women's magazines that are sold in supermarkets and bookstores
nationwide. All that's missing are the "10 Signs Your Husband is Cheating" and
"47 Ways to Lose Weight Fast" articles.

~~~
blurry
I agree Jose, Boudica community seems to cater to the lowest common
denominator. I posted the link not because I like it but because it is
precisely what the poster asked, a Digg for girls.

------
cglee
Here's another: <http://www.kirtsy.com/>

------
mannylee1
Try www.lipstick.com.

------
DanielBMarkham
There are a few -- try <http://www.kirtsy.com/>

------
feverishaaron
kirtsy.com

