I read the top 50 most influential bloggers list posted by Northxeast the other day as you all must have too. As is expected from most of such list posts, its being read and linked to even today by many. What intrigued me about this list was that it did not include a lot of the female bloggers who are equally or even more popular in some cases. As I was contemplating who got included and how many female bloggers were left out and such things, I also was thinking that it is possible there are fewer female bloggers than male bloggers – obviously, but then I read Shona’s post over at rich minx along similar thoughts, which revealed there were only 6 female bloggers listed in that top 50 most influential bloggers!! This is obviously a very interesting observation and I wonder why there are only 6 bloggers, why are not more females included in the list? I am by no means undermining the female bloggers included in that list, but I do feel that emomsathome by Wendy, successful-blog by Liz and the all encompassing WordPress blog by Lorelle and Search Engine Guide by Jennifer Laycock are blogs that are known to provide unparalleled support to the blogging community and definitely needed a mention in that list.
As I thought more about this, I was wondering if majority of the girls were even reading some of the most popular blogs or they limit themselves to reading just the ones in close proximity of their own communities or friends’ blogs! I personally have known and sporadically read most (not all) of the blogs listed in the top 50 and I was curious as to how many females read those blogs or even knew about them. So of course to quench my thirst, I used a nifty little tool that was created by Philipp Lenssen, author of Google Blogoscoped, to check out the male/female ratios of these blogs.
I checked the top 50 blogs listed by Northxeast (some couldn’t be found by the tool which is a bit odd) but also included some of the blogs I read along with of course the female bloggers that I think should have been included in that list. Most of the ratios seem intuitive when you think about the site, but I was particularly surprised at Chris Garrette’s blog in that only 2% of the females are reading his blog! So here are the he/she ratios of the popular sites:
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![gizmodo_thumb16[1][1]](https://fresh-perspectives.net/wp-content/uploads//2007/09/gizmodo-thumb1611.jpg) |
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Some of the blogs that I read look like this |
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This is the funniest result I have seen so far! |
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and this is how my blog looks like |
I am not sure if such studies have been done before or if its even possible to find this ratio accurately and I have no idea how Philipp Lenssen calculates it either, but it is an interesting overview.
And I wonder a few things about the results…
Why are more females not blogging?
Why are more females not reading ‘most influential’ blogs?
Did Northxeast mean most influential ‘technology’ bloggers?
If not, do you think any of these blogs would start considering blogging on topics that are of interest to females, in order to increase their readership?
I just hope more and more female bloggers start reading some of the very knowledgeable blogs out there and if more of them started blogging, I am sure they will only add to the richness of the blogosphere.
I would love to know what you think of these ratios!
Technorati Tags: community, top50
pearl
teeni.. well said :) one reader at a time…. regardless of what the calculation method was, I think there are plenty of bright women who may not be reading and/or writing and to have a true harmony in the blogosphere, its time they join in…..
and this is not an arena where they will not be accepted either as in some other fields, I am sure most men would like to see women participate in discussions and read what they really have to say…. don’t you think?