Cr8pc's Kim Berg Has a Point

Thought I was finished blogging for the night, but I found one more bit of "news" I'd like to share.  Kim Berg, owner of the Cr8aSite Forums, and her own blog Cre8pc on Usability & Holistic SEO had a post that made me really sit back and go "hmmmm"?

Kim points out a post on Google Blogoscoped about "Popular Blogposts".  I'd say there's about 10-15 picked, he even took the time to take images of the bloggers and make them into black & white.  When a few women spoke up on his comments area, about the lack of women being represented in this piece, the reaction was a not all that enthusiastic.  In fact, as a women reader, I took the replies to the women as a bit combative.

Granted this medium does not display those body language queues we all try to gauge human emotions and reactions with, and perhaps I had a predisposition from reading Kim's article.  However, instead of being a little rude about the questions perhaps Phillip could have offered "Why don't you point me to 5 or 10 women bloggers.  Maybe I could add them to my reading list."

Kim presented a good question - how many women bloggers do you know or read?  I went through my bloglines tonight, I can count 4 solely women written blogs, 1 co-written and then if you count Search Marketing Gurus who's headed by a woman (me) - there 6 out of 130.  Wow what a percentage that is. It's not for lack of trying either, it's just that the search/blog/womm industry is predominantly male.

So here's a few women bloggers you might want to add to  your blog roll:

• Cre8pc
• SugarRae
• Debbie Weil
• Jackie Huba
• Jenn Slegg
• and of course Search Marketing Gurus

I think I'd like to take a woman's perspective of this, and ask any women bloggers out there, "What was your highest trafficked blog post to date and why?"  Email me - smg [- a t -] searchmarketinggurus dot com.  Hopefully I'll get a few together in the next couple of days to put together a nice article.

Comments

[Kim (cre8pc)]

Heh. Need to add YOUR blog to my list! It did seem a shame that the comments to his post seemed hostile. My own feelings were just surprise at the obvious missing gender. It felt unbalanced not to adress the missing women in some way. As you smartly point out, asking for suggestions would have been something he could have done, although it may have aggravated the situation. It wasn't until somebody complained that we even learned that women were supposedly asked to respond to his orignial query.

Blogher is loaded with women bloggers. I tend to find women bloggers have a lot of good humor, which makes them sought after in my mind :)

[SearchStudent]

I read the post and didn't see it the same way... I DID see the fact that those bloggers were all men... Maybe that guy just likes THOSE particular bloggers better than others?

I do see both sides of the argument, but I see most of the standoffish comments coming from KathyF and Jeneane not from the men who replied. I think the guy's point was he picked the blogs he liked and thought were most influential in his world, the bloggers happened to be guys. Maybe partially by chance, maybe partially because of his personal opinion, I dunno. Probably a mix of both.

Maybe guys like to read guys blog. Operah's audience is more female than male, so maybe the blogosphere is similar?

I mean don't just throw the guy under the bus, I can see the point.. there were no women. That doesn't mean he is a woman hater.

As a soap box, I also think reverse sexism is almost as bad as sexism. Flame me if you must, but I think we all need to only see PEOPLE not sexes, races, etc. I think the guys who responded were basically saying the same.

Just because this guy likes mostly male bloggers doesn't mean he is a sexist. To be honest, most of the blogs I read are from guys too, and I would never imagine in a million years considering myself sexist. I hope other's don't either.

Anyway, I blog here too, so you can't add SMG to the "female blogs"... at least not until my operation (kidding of course)

[Li]

Chris,

Great points. It's likely Phillip didn't even put this thought into his head when he wrote this. He did say he emailed and got no response.

I'm not throwing him under the bus, just trying to show a different view point, and how another approach might not have had such a negative view on how he reacted.

Also gives me an opportunity to write up a piece that doesn't get a lot of attention.

As for saying SMG is a female blog - it falls under the co-written like Church of the Customer Blog that's co-written by Jackie Huba. We don't want you going through any unnecessary operations now Chris! :)

[Debra]

Hey I have a blog !!