The Debate

Halley Suitt and Charlene Li were introduced by Lisa.

"Two women I respect enormously... when we decided that we were going to take on the whole issue of whether or not we should play by today's rules or change the game, I knew that they would be fantastic to take on the question."

There is a reason why Kevin Drum had trouble identifying women bloggers. Currently, if you go on Technorati and Google, the traffic we get is only as good as the search results - and we are NOT showing up in the search results. Do we want to look at this - or do we not care?

Charlene: I do think it matters. I think it's because the game is out there. It's being played and there are certain rules to it. 80% of the traffic is generated by 20% of the blogs - it's really hard to fight that because people have a tendency to go where others go. So if you care about visibility, you have to learn the rules and play by them.

The biggest caveat is the hardest thing is playing by the rules and not checking yourself at the door. Any time you play by the rules, it's hard to figure that out.

Halley: In the first place, wasn't blogging all about not playing by the rules? Isn't it high time to do something different? (I'm talking year 2000). The big date for us was 9/11 - who was reporting? Blogs came of age on that day. Within a month, the NY Times set a series of very personal essays - and the tone of that language was blogging, recounting in a personal way who those people were. Blogging changed the NY Times within a few weeks.

Lisa (ironic): Doesn't the NY Times only publish the good people? Aren't the Technorati Top 100 the best? If women were good enough, wouldn't they be on that list?  (A soft boo from the room.)

What are the rules of the game?

Charlene: I think that this conference changes the rules. I had tears in my eyes watching this,.
Lisa: Oh, you're just a woman. (LAUGHTER)

Charlene: First of all, we need to network. You have to tell people what you need and tell people what you can give. How you can help them at this conference. And then tell them what you need. Because I need more examples of how women are making their way in business.

And the other one is to be very relevant. The people on the A list are linked by hundreds and thousands of people.

Halley: I want to say that if you are not reading Charlene, you should be. What she says about networking is spot on. And if I have any traffic, it came in the very simple way that at the beginning of my blog, I knew a lot of people -

Halley: When I started out I knew a lot of A list bloggers and I went to them and asked them if they would mention what I'm blogging. And on some days they said no, and on some days they said yes.

Recommended book: Why Women Don't Ask.

Lisa: But some people are offended if you ask for links.

Tish G: The A-List does count. When the press looks for blogs, they look at the A-List. Funny thing is, I did ask you for a link once.

Halley (laughing): And I blew it. So ask me again. People are busy - ask again.

Audience: A lot of the people in the 100 list are not only friends, but they created the technology for the feeds. So if you go to Bloglines, it's the same people who are friends with Creative bloglines and Feedster and the list.

Halley: But if you ask them, and ask them three times, they will often do it.

Audience (Liza Sabetier): NO. They don't do it. (She's moderating Flame Blame and Shame). It's a kind of boy society. Shelley Powers wrote a fantastic post "Guys Don't Link" and she talks about the "Link Circle Jerk" and that's exactly what it is.

Audience: Better to get links from 10 people in this room than from the Technorati 100, because you're going to get traffic from people you care about.

Charlene: I don't equate the A List from the Technorati 100 - My A list is going to be different from Halley's or anyone else. My rules are Network, Be Relevant and Be Unique.

Liz Dietz was asked to state how she feels. She says how she doesn't care about the A-List. She writes about what she cares about and she shows up in Google's Top 10 on those topics (A suburban woman writing about education.) The people who are interested in my niche issues are going to find me. And the men? They aren't going to write about it.

Halley: If you want to be on the list, you have to write about politics, be a man, etc. I say two things: male or female, don't subscribe to that very narrow vision of what blogging can be. It was a technology developed to be counter to the media. So it needs to be what Ms. Dietz's vision is. A whole new galaxy.

Audience: Do we really need to be validated by Technorati, the mainstream press or other traditional media. We are our own validation. We can do far more by representing ourselves.

Halley: How much further could you go by getting noticed? I think we have so many valid voices in this room, I see what the power of search engines/linking do. Think if you could go further.

Audience: But let's create our own criteria.

Halley: To be fair - if Charlene gets picked to talk about something and the room is men, it's going to be about something no one else can speak about and that's valid. There used to be no African-American baseball players - did that mean there weren't any good players? Of course not.

Audience (Dana Boyd): I think women and men tend to network differently. Women tend to build dense networks - they network with a few people and know them intimately. Men spread out, with larger, thinner networks -- and the Technorati list is based on that model.

You need to know that they are playing by a very particular kind of network.

Lisa: We need new codes - new measures.

Talk now on goal-setting -- just getting traffic is not your goal. You need to be clear about what you are writing about and then do it. Real world example about a blog set up to effect a change locally and via relevance, they became a source and effected the change. Talking about credibility instead of a search for popularity.

Lisa: It's interesting that we have a discussion about the need for diversity, and that the L.A. Times recently started a thread on the search for diversity on the Supereme Court and there were no women bloggers.

The blog is a whole new world, turning everything upside down, giving everyone a voice. 43% are women bloggers. You should not be so focused on T100. That is only one of the measurables. Find a new way to take the female voices and create a new metric.

Liz Rizzo - Everyday Goddess. Collaborative blogs - wish there were more versions of the Technorati 100. When I click on it, I find about three voices on it. I see Will, I see Dooce. And then I see companies. I want to see 100 individual voices. So I can find more people like Will and Dooce.

Jan of Weblogs Inc: A specific thing to become one of those blogs -- I joined a network. Join up in networks. We need a couple of people to join up and form a network.

Lisa: One for the to-do list.

Karen Luke - Works for Microsoft. Can have access to A List because she works for Microsoft - and doesn't care. It doesn't matter to be the most popular person in the world. There's a lot of women in technology. You can help change from the inside as well -- by helping to shape the rules.

Lisa: Coding from the inside.

Koan Bremner: Concerns about how Technorati works, as the tags she put in her posts didn't show up for seven days.

Nile Kennedy of Technorati: We do not remove tags. But you can put up what you want on there, even Technorati_Sucks, and we won't pull it down. There's no censorship, but there may be some technical issues with pings and your blog.

Lisa:
The issue of reliability: How often to you update? How often do we need to ping?

Nile: If you do a direct ping to Technorati, we'll grab you within five minutes. We have a spike every morning (people who get to work and don't want to work right away, people in Europe who just got off work) and that could make it wait for 15 to 20 minutes.

Mary Hodder: Want to point one thing out about the T100 list and link counting. Technorati scrapes the front of your blog. And that includes blogrolls. Four years ago, when there were 100,000 blogs - there's a legacy there. Has been working on a post about this issue for a couple of months without coming across as too technical, to create a community algorhythm to express what it means to blog within a community. So we can figure out ways to express our conversation in better ways than inbound links. Like a throwback to old media. Need more than one metric, including outbound links, comments, etc. Would like some help figuring out what those things are - what matters to them socially about their online activities so we can translate that into a new algorhythm and give them to companies like Technorati and ask them to give us a more relevant list.

Miriam Verburg: Making new networks is one thing. Making networks of choice is another thing! I'm not going to make a network with someone I think is an idiot - it's who we are choosing to talk to and strengthening those bonds.

Marian Douglas (Marian's Blog): - Blogs internationally and questions this US Centered Democrat/Republican mindset when it comes to politics. How do we bridge being online with the people who are not online?

Mark Canter: If you don't like what's going on, start your own company and do it yourself. There could easily be a BlogHer 100. Create your own list and tell the men to F off.

YPulse: Try some old-school marketing. When she started YPulse, she found the name of everyone who worked for a magazine to the same audience and sent a postcard, and this was effective.

Audience (Amber) : Made the decision not to ask for links and just focused on her niche and you know what happened? People took notice, linked to her. She gets emails from people asking how did someone

Lisa: If you ask for links, are you a link whore? (Consensus: Yes - That's a controversial subject.)

Halley: Blogwhoring. Isn't that whore word kind of a female derogatory term? It's not a pleasant term. Let's not use it - male or female.

Wrapup:

Charlene: I think asking for a link, if it's a relevant link, is a totally relevant thing.

Halley: I am counting on you to push this medium as far as you can, do something so radical that there ain't no list for it and you create the list. Start your own companies. We need to, as women to start our own companies. I want to get away from the lists.

Lisa: Except our Mother of All To-Do List.

Meeting adjourned. See ya at the next one!

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