Monday, December 15, 2008

Almost Half of Women in their Fourties Use Social Networks

A recent eMarketer report of a SheSpeaks survey revealed that more than 40% of women in their fourties had a social networking profile. Out of all the women surveyed, 46% used social networks.

Aliza Freud, CEO of SheSpeaks, commented in a statement, “40-somethings are active users and members of online social networks. These women have started to use the Web and social networks in ways that mirror the rest of their lives.”


Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Gmail Adds Task List Feature

After creating a laundry list of geeky Gmail add-ons (such as Mail Goggles, which requires users to answer math problems before enabling them to send out emails late at night on weekends- thereby preventing “drunken mailing”), Gmail finally offers a useful tool for women on the go. The Gmail Task List appears under Labs in the Settings section. Enabling Tasks creates a link under Contacts. Users can add, rearrange, and cross out tasks. They create multiple lists and add tasks directly from emails. Additional information, such as notes and due dates, can be associated with tasks. And although, as Erick Schonfeld of Tech Crunch points out, useful features like sharing/emailing task lists and syncing to Google Calendar are not available, the Task List is an easy way to keep track of errands without having to use an external site or email them to oneself.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Stylehop Provides Fashion Shopping Engine with Consumer Ratings

At Stylehop, fashion conscious women can shop, rate items of clothing, play games, and earn points that they can use as rebates to their purchases. The idea behind Stylehop is that the most valuable and relevant fashion advice for a woman does not come from New York, LA or celebrities, but from a woman’s fashion peers. Their goal is to become the Zagat of fashion- a shopping engine with robust, filterable consumer ratings.



Stylehop could have easily created a boring, Amazon-like ratings engine. Instead, they created fun, addictive, lightweight social games and quizzes to drive engagement and build the foundation for a robust, ratings-based shopping engine. The games prompt women to provide a five-star rating for each item presented, creating the star ranking data that feeds StyleHop’s shopping engine and allowing it to generate a substantial amount of ratings for a variety of items. Another catalyst to drive engagement is the points system, where women are rewarded for activities like reviewing styles, filling out their profile, etc. The points can be used towards rebates on items purchased through the site. Additionally, Stylehop allows results to be filterable not only by brand and product attributes but also by whom you want providing your five-star rankings.

More Women than Men Watch Online Video

According to a recent Nielsen study, online video viewers skew towards women. 55% of US women watch online video, compared with 45% of US men. The same study showed nearly the exact same demographic spread for male versus female TV viewers. However, more men than women watch video on their mobile phones.