Dollymix's Top 10 Websites for Women
The other week, those of you with sturdy memories will recall, I wrote a piece about the lack of decent women's websites, communities and hang-outs online. It's not just that the websites supposedly built for women tend to be bland reproductions of printed magazines with forums that make you despair for your gender, it's also that sites such as Digg and Fark, tend to be pretty unwelcoming - if not positively hostile - towards women (just cast your eye over the story results for "women" on Digg and check out the kinds of comments the stories get). And so, in a bid to find the best places for women to while away their work hours online, I've put together the Dollymix Top 10 Websites for Women. Some of the results may surprise you...
Keep reading for Dollymix's Top 10 Websites for Women.
How I put the list together
I've put together this list based on my own preferences about where I like to go to play, suggestions from readers who emailed me in response to my original column, comments on Shiny Shiny and Dollymix and recommendations from the women of Shiny Towers.
I've tried to pick sites that don't pander to stereotypes, sites that foster friendly feelings between women rather than operating as a venue for bitchfests, and places that act as a bit of a refuge from male-dominated Web 2.0 sites. I've also left off the many excellent personal blogs and have only included sites that are either directly geared towards women or those which are peopled mainly by them.
I should also add that although I was intending to leave out Shiny Media blogs, for obvious reasons, in the end I felt that the two biggest women's sites in our network were too good to leave out. I also thought that the list without them looked pretty lame. It's not very British of me, but Shiny Media's been doing sites for women since 2004, and I think we're pretty good at them. Apologies for the humility bypass!
1. Craftster
If you think the criteria for "best place for women to hang out on line" are: friendly and welcoming; creative and interesting; geeky and clever (after all, this *is* the web - the non geeks get the real world); and inspiring and funny, then Craftster wins hands down. I hesitated to put this at number one, because not all women are into crafts and some might feel that it's like picking Good Housekeeping as the best women's magazine. But I just haven't come across a community that's both so web-literate, so friendly and yet so full of females. Worth getting into knitting just so you can pay a visit.
2. Catwalk Queen
It turns out women who like clothes also like funny, well written, interesting writing - who knew?! The editorial policy is to be positive, bitch-free, witty and to avoid the use of the phrase "that's *soooooo* last season" on pain of death. The best place on the web to read about what's hot in Topshop right now, whilst catching up on a spot of fashion gossip.
3. Shiny Shiny
It's hard to believe now that back in 2004 there wasn't a gadgets site out there for women. Now the web is awash with them, and magazines like Look, Woman & Home, Observer Woman, Marie Claire and Good Housekeeping have caved in to the inevitable and started to use Shiny Shiny writers to do technology pieces for them. Shiny Shiny was the first ever gadgets for girls blog, and it now gets 390,000 visits a month - most of them of the lady persuasion.
4. The Lipster
The Lipster's fairly new to the world, but already it's created a great magazine site for women, with the perfect mixture of a fanzine feel and professional writing (the "Weekly Mag Report" feature is a personal favourite). The choice of features range from silly celeb pieces, to music interviews and news round ups.
5. This Next
Personally, I prefer Wists, but I prefer Pageflakes to Netvibes and Gizmodo to Engadget, so what do I know. But whether it's This Next or Wists, one thing you can be sure of is that these social bookmarking sites offer you a place that is one big vat full of lovely lovely stuff.
6. Jezebel
Gawker's women's website only launched 11 months ago, but already it's one of Nick Denton's most popular blogs, combining celebrity gossip and Gawker-style commentary. It wants to have its cake and eat it, producing Snap Judgements on pap shots of celebrities whilst berating its readers for being bitchy and boring, but there's no denying that this is a slick and exciting site.
7. Heatworld
The comments may be getting dumber by the day (isn't it time for a Jezebel-style intervention?) and those old media publishers may forget about how to link out to the rest of the web, but this is a great site for anyone who can't get enough of photos of Kerry Katona, Amy Winehouse and whichever reality TV star is currently in the news.
8. The Broadsheet
Salon.com's intelligent women's blog is brilliantly articulate and high-brow. But it's also funny, interesting and personal. This is the ultimate antidote to shake off that dirty feeling you get after finding yourself sucked into reading Femail.
9. Yahoo Shine
Despite the fact that they saw fit to name their site Shine (isn't there already an online female-focused publishing company with a name like that?..) Yahoo's female portal is actually much better than I'd ever thought it could be. Sure, it's full of the usual fluff that you get on sites like this, but there's also some great features, a ready-made community, thanks to Yahoo's web omnipresence, and a clean "Web 2.0" vibe to the whole enterprise.
10.Ravelry and Sk*rt
These last two are included less for what they do currently and more for the hope they offer for the future of female-friendly websites. Ravelry is a a Web 2.0 destination for all those crafty geeks out there. It's a safe house for women online, with no fear of YouTube or Digg-style misogyny, and already . Currently invite-only, I predict that Ravelry will have taken over the world by this time next year.
Sk*rt is a tricky one. I ummed and ahhed before including it mainly because it's still very far from being busy, and also because despite trying at least 10 times, I'm yet to receive my confirmation email that will allow me to use the service (and since others have said the same, I'm guessing that's partly the reason they're not very busy). There's no reason why there shouldn't be a site that focuses less on technology and assorted geekery and more on fashion and lifestyle news, but somehow this "Digg for chicks" (that still makes me shudder) doesn't quite cut the mustard. Let's hope that this time next year I'm telling a different story.
So there's my Top 10. What's yours? Feel free to email me at shinykatie at gmail.com or drop a comment under this post (we don't bite!)
Thanks to all the commenters and emailers who offered advice and suggestions for this Top 10.
Katie Lee is Shiny Media's chief blog botherer and general web pest.
Post a comment
Required fields marked by *