Aileen Lee, partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins, wrote a guest post for Techcrunch entitled "Why Women Rule The Internet" Aileen makes the point that women are the "majority of users of social networking sites and spend 30% more time on these sites than men". She continues, "according to Gilt Groupe, women are 70% of the customer base and they drive 74% of revenue. And 77% of Groupon’s customers are female according to their site".
The killer quote is at the end "Women are the routers and amplifiers of the social web. And they are the rocket fuel of ecommerce. The ongoing debate about women in tech has been missing a key insight. If you figure out how to harness the power of female customers, you can rock the world." I encourage you to read the full post on Techcrunch.
Last week at SXSW (South By South West) was filled with parties and receptions every night. I had great conversations with Jessi Hempel (Fortune Magazine), Kara Swisher (Wall Street Journal), Caroline McCarthy (CNET), Maya Baratz (Wall Street Journal), Stacey Higginbotham (GigaOm), and Katie Boehret (Wall Street Journal). I also ran into Alexia Tsotsis (Techcrunch), Megan McCarthy (Techmeme), and others.
It didn't occur to me until the end of the night that I spent most of my time with female journalists. Hmmm...where are all the male journalists? I am sure the guys are around somewhere...but I didn't see them. Then I started thinking about other prominent female tech writers like Sarah Lacy, Mary Jo Foley, Jolie O'Dell, Ina Fried, Leena Rao, Xeni Jardin, Gina Trapani, and many more. I only have room for three pictures in this short post, and I'm sure you know who they are. More photos are on my Twitter stream.
Why are there so many great female tech writers? Because they are great communicators. In both directions. They express themselves well, and they listen carefully. We testosterone controlled males sometimes have trouble listening. That can be a problem if your job is learning about new things. It can also be a problem when thinking about how to build social services that are engaging.
The success of Zynga, Groupon, Gilt Groupe, Zappos, and many other shopping, social, gaming sites is due largely to women. Women have played a vital role in building Techcrunch too. It wouldn't exist without Mike Arrington, but it wouldn't be as good as it is without Heather Harde (CEO), Sarah Lacy, Leena Rao, and Alexia Tsotsis.
Women are also in leadership positions at the biggest tech companies. At Google we have Marissa Mayer, Stephanie Tilenius, Susan Wojcicki, Megan Smith, and many more. At Cisco, Padmasree Warrior is the CTO. Claudia Fan Munce is Managing Director of IBM Venture Capital Group. And, Intel Capital has lots of women making investments, including my good friends Lucy McQuilken and Christine Herron.
If you want to follow some awesome women on Twitter you can subscribe to my Top Women In Tech list. Get a daily feed of tech insights from women who are making it happen.
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