I’m utterly confused. You would think that women, eventually, wouldn’t be seen as an impossible-to-reach marketing niche. Alas, this list of the “Top 10 Social Networking Sites for Women” by social networking website Mashable.com proves otherwise.
Number one on the list, iVillage.com, boasts a tagline of “Health, Beauty, Pregnancy, Entertainment and More.” The main menu tags: Health, Diet, Pregnancy & Parenting, Beauty & Style, Home & Garden, Go Green, Food, Weddings, Love, Entertainment, Astrology, and Games.
Next, we have sites with names like CafeMom, Glam, and TeamSugar. From looking at the content, we can draw up a few composite sketches of this elusive “female” creature: 1) Some of them are mothers, but do little else. 2) Some of them buy things like lipstick and Manolo Blahniks–but that’s about it.
3) Others seemingly feed off of the imminent demise of Britney Spears, but care about little else. 4) A combination of all three. To be clear: I have functioning ovaries. I have purchased things in the past, and will likely do so again.
But I can’t imagine any women I know using any of those sites on a regular basis. Why? We read intelligent things, we play sports, we’re firefighters, and we enjoy colors other than pink. Besides, we already comprise 2/3 of Facebook. Can you imagine a list of male social networking sites with names like: DadTalk, FatherGab, FootballChat? No. Because those wouldn’t be labeled male social networking sites, but niche sites dedicated to parenting or sports. And of course: they, too, would be unbearably lame.
