URL: www.blogher.com
What: Reacting to blogging conferences and academic discussions dominated by techy men, three tech, marketing and publishing saavy women – Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins – launched a blog conference in 2005 for women. The conference took off, a year later major advertisers flocked to hang out with the big decision-makers in consumer spending, and the conference rapidly evolved into an online hub and advertising network for women bloggers. The BlogHer network today has 2,200 blog affiliates and venture capital investment. BlogHer changed the game for blogging. By building a conversation and a business around women who wanted to talk about subjects other than technology and blogging itself, BlogHer propelled blogging further into the mainstream and showed that blogs by women about health, diet, parenting, sex and other topics had a place alongside blogs by men about computers. What’s more, they had a business model and an audience.
Nominated For: Purpose, Business Model
Rate here: BlogHer
Beth Laing is the project manager for iFOCOS, which organizes the We Media conferences, awards and community. Prior to working with We Media she worked in a variety of new media roles with Knight Ridder, Infonautics and Access Atlanta. She is currently on the board of the Atlanta Women’s Alliance (AWA), Community Advisory Board for Junior League Dekalb and a Leadership Dekalb 2010 class member.