Is TypePad mainly for women?
06/26/2012
Or are most bloggers female now, or what? As you can see from the URL, TypePad is where this blog is hosted. They recently redesigned their own web site. The new look struck me as feminine, but I didn't really give that any thought until I had logged in to it a number of times and finally stopped and noticed the content of the page. "Crafts, food, style"? And every one of the blogs displayed on the page is by a woman. I don't care--it's a good service and I'm happy with it--but it seems a little odd. Surely it's not accidental. You don't get the same feel from the WordPress homepage.
Typepad seems to trail Wordpress in number of users, maybe this is an attempt to differentiate itself from the larger rival.
Posted by: Peter | 06/26/2012 at 10:16 PM
Could be. WordPress's basic service is free and very full-featured. You can do pretty much everything except make extensive changes to the designs. The equivalent from TypePad is $9/month. So if nothing else that accounts for a lot of the difference. So like you say TP may be trying to pin down a segment of the market as its specialty.
Posted by: Mac | 06/26/2012 at 11:16 PM
Does that page stay the same, or do blogs rotate through?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 06/27/2012 at 07:34 AM
I haven't paid enough attention to notice. I just go there, log in, and proceed to my blog control stuff, which doesn't have all that. Today it looks a little different, but is mostly the same blogs.
They also have introduced a new feature, which is annoying a lot of people: in the list of a blog's recent activity, which used to be only comments and posts, they've started throwing in their choice of a "featured blog", which is a big graphic that takes up a lot of the space. And it's nearly always one of these very feminine blogs. For instance, here's the most recent. That I mind, because not only does it take up space with something I'm not interested in, but when they did that they took away some useful features, like the ability to click on a comment and mark it as spam.
I had supposed that the feminine slant--and not just feminine, but a particular kind of feminine--I mean, these are nothing like, say, your blog, or Sally's--was just a reflection of the tastes of the management, but as Peter suggested it could be a conscious marketing strategy.
Posted by: Mac | 06/27/2012 at 09:25 AM
Hi Mac,
I've been reading your stuff since Caelum et Terra!!
A few years ago we were following each other's blogs when I was writing Always Advent over at St. Blog's. I went so long without posting that they shut it down, and now some other Catholic mom has a blog called Always Advent...grr.
Anyway, I started over. My new website is called Simplify2x over at WordPress, where they have touchy-feely-bloggy definitely feminine "awards" that bloggers exchange. :)
I have nominated you for the Reader Appreciation Award! (You may laugh!) But do click through and check it out:
http://simplify2x.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/reader-appreciation-award/
Glad to see you still have good ol' C & T in your sidebar...
Posted by: Clare | 06/27/2012 at 02:38 PM
Thank you! I won't try to spread the award-ness, as I'm extremely busy and about to leave town for a few days. But it's very much appreciated.
I was wondering about the "2x" but then I read the Thoreau quote. I think St. Blog's pretty much went away altogether, didn't it?
Posted by: Mac | 06/27/2012 at 03:21 PM
St. Blog's still exists, and there are many, many blogs listed on the site. I checked some random ones, and some of them are actively posting and up to date. But when I dropped out of the blogosphere I stopped checking in, so I don't know how up to date St. Blog's itself is and how many people go there when they're looking for a Catholic blog.
Posted by: Clare | 07/03/2012 at 09:43 PM