Women who blog empowered at 'BlogHer'

WIRED:LAST WEEKEND BlogHer, the conference for women who blog, was in San Francisco, and I'm one of the handful of men around, writes Danny O'Brien.

It's fascinating in the way that attending any conference that's not really aimed at you is fascinating. You get to see otherwise invisible allegiances and networks; you hear stories and terminology that you wouldn't normally hear, and the general level of the conversation raises to a professional point that is usually dimmed or simplified when others are around.

In this case, I'm not the only one curious to see what's going on in this corner of the blogging world. The US corporate world is fascinated too, to the point of showering the attendees with gifts and questions. Macy's, the department store, has spent over $10,000 to throw a party for the conference's visitors to San Francisco. General Motors sponsored hybrid cars for women carpooling from across the United States. Nintendo, Microsoft, Starbucks and T-Mobile are other sponsors vying for the eye of this market. Advisers to the Obama and McCain campaigns are speaking here, and hanging around to ask questions afterwards.

And with good reason. This isn't the usual "what do women want"? investigations that slightly distant advertising executives struggle with. That enternally vague question must still keep Proctor and Gamble product line executives up at night, but the impression I get from BlogHer is that many of the multinational visitors are not here to sell to this audience. The best of the corporate visitors are here to make deals.

Since BlogHer first began in 2005, its community of mommy bloggers, diarists and aspiring writers has turned into a mini-industry of its own. While the original conference concentrated on discussions about the impact of a virtual "room of your own", BlogHer 2008 had talks on increasing your web traffic, contributing and debugging open source coding projects, getting respect as a political blogger, and what to do with your first blog-to-book offer.

For a sizeable component of those paying $300 to attend, blogging isn't just a hobby - it's a business.

And it's a business that they know better than the advertisers here. As its attendees have grown more confident, so the conference morphed over the years into BlogHer the year-round business: an advertising network that sells the space on women blogger's websites, bringing the numerous communities that read these blogs to the advertisers keen to reach them. BlogHer runs the adverts on more than 2,000 blogs, and recently pulled in $5 million (€3 million) in seed funding from GM's venture capital wing.

What that means is that the audience here are more consultants and editors than a target market for the advertisers. They're the people creating the media that the big companies do well being associated with. And it's not just about banner adverts: more than 64 per cent of the BlogHer blogs' audience have bought something on the recommendation of the blogs they read.

The traditional media outlets like to talk about the issue of trust on the internet. Would you really trust a randomly googled site or a Wikipedia entry over a carefully researched piece in the New York Times? But the trust equation works both ways. I will listen far more keenly when a blogger whose life I read about every day gives out a positive review than if Frank Rich or some magazine's summer travel guide hands out a good write-up.

No wonder that these bloggers are getting so much attention. Talking to BlogHer's visitors, they seemed a little shell-shocked: either self-deprecatory, or at the very least unprepared for the attention.

That doesn't mean that they're not capable of seeing through attempts to manipulate or control them. While there are amateur-turned-professional bloggers who have turned their sideline into multithousand-dollar monthly turnovers, most are still doing it for the fun, or for "pin money" - the majority of BlogHer's blogger-users who earn under $100 a month. The small amounts of money mean that they are far less beholden to sponsors or marketeers than the more permanent, professional print media.

There's also the dangers of missteps. Last year, a well-meaning sponsor included an oven mitt in the BlogHer goodie bag, prompting a chorus of irritation from women who didn't want to be targeted as people who just couldn't wait to get back to the kitchen and cook up another turkey. This year, a squad of companies skirted the line when they offered a makeover room - until it became clear that the makeover included new anti-virus software to clean up their disk drives, a financial advice "spa" from Intuit, and a free laptop optimisation from HP.

It seems an arbitrary line with which to divide those who write online: into those who identify as women bloggers, and those who don't. But it works; and it's one that marketeers like very much.

As one attendee overheard someone say: "BlogHer is a target-rich environment." Moreover, given that smart, effective, net-savvy female writers have been underrepresented and belittled for so long, it's about time someone recognised their real power.