The Most Influential Women in Web 2.0
(L to R: Leah Culver, Pownce; Rashmi Sinha, Slideshare; Dina Kaplin, blip.tv; Marissa Mayer, Google; Cyan Banister, Zivity; Lisa Stone, Jory Des Jardins, and Elisa Camahort Page, BlogHer; Caterina Fake, Flickr; Gina Bianchini, Ning; Kaliya Hamlin, OpenID; Mena Trott, Six Apart; and Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post.)
Women have been heavily instrumental in redefining the way we interact online. Here’s a look at the most influential of these.
We’ve heard the stats before — only a quarter of those involved in computer and mathematical occupations are women. And yet, in the ever-evolving world of Web 2.0, women have often been pioneers, redefining the way we interact online. To give credit where it’s due, we tracked down the most influential of these. Our list wasn’t chosen by star power, nor by career altitude. Rather, we feature the biggest innovators.
What she’s done: As the lead developer and a founder of social networking site Pownce, 25-year old Culver has made it possible for people to quickly and easily swap large media (like files, movies, photos) without crashing their systems. Now projects like Twitter’s photo sharing site TwitPic and Facebook are taking a leaf out of Pownce’s book.
How she got there: Culver started out as an art major at the University of Minnesota, but found her calling in a required programming class. “Before that I didn’t even know what programming was,” she admits. After graduating in 2006 with a Computer Science degree, she worked at iLoop Mobile and Instructables, two startups in the Bay Area, before eventually deciding to start her own thing. She built Pownce from scratch using a programming language called Python.
What to learn from her: You’re never too young to start your own company. And particularly if you write software, your own web site can be relatively cheap. “As a programmer the route to your own company is easy – you build a site and get people excited about it,” says Culver. Pownce hasn’t needed venture capital — Culver has relied on funds from family and friends.
Rashmi Sinha
What she’s done: The CEO and co-founder of SlideShare, Sinha was the first to create a site that allowed slides to be taken beyond limited office or educational use and shared online. “As with video, where early entrepreneurs recognized that asynchronous sharing on the web could work, we realized with presentations that it was time to move beyond in-person presentations and that you could share slides on the web. Others could comment, favorite, download and build on this,” she explains.
How she got there: Sinha has a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Brown University. After graduation, she worked as a researcher at the Information School at UC Berkeley, focusing on how to optimize search engines and recommended systems (those “recommended” titles that pop up on Amazon when you’re looking for a book, for instance.) She started her own user-experience consultancy – clients included eBay, iFilm, AAA and Blue Shield — which then eventually morphed into SlideShare.
What to learn from her: If you’re tech-oriented, and particularly if you’re female, Web 2.0 is the best place to start out. “There are more entry points in the Web 2.0 world than in more hardcore tech companies like Intel. Web 2.0 is also the right mix of the social and the technical so that women can prosper. They are contributing in a more visible manner than in other tech fields.”
Marissa Mayer
What she’s done: A 10-year veteran of Google, Mayer — currently Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience — was a major player behind many of the company’s most popular interactive services, including Gmail, the first email program to follow a threaded-message model; Orkut, which Mayer envisioned as the first social network that wasn’t angled towards dating; and iGoogle, which allows you to personalize your Google page.
How she got there: Originally a biology and chemistry student at Stanford, Mayer graduated with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an M.S. in Computer Science. Prior to joining Google, Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at non-profit research institute, SRI International, in Menlo Park, California.
What to learn from her: If you’re going corporate, don’t just look for a role that will suit you–find a company that will help you grow. “Find an environment where you feel very comfortable, an environment where people will invest in you,” says Mayer. “Google really invested in me and I’m really at home there. Fundamentally I’m a geek, and everyone around me is a geek so I fit right in.”
Dina Kaplan
What she’s done: Kaplan is the co-founder and COO of blip.tv, a platform for producers to distribute original shows on the Web. Blip.tv was the initial platform for Wall Strip video blog, which was bought by CBS for $5 million last May. Under its model, producers don’t need Nielsen to know how their audience feels-viewers of shows delivered via blip.tv can comment, favorite, and share content.
How she got there: A graduate of Wesleyan College with a degree in economics, government, philosophy and history, Kaplan worked a couple of jobs in the White House before landing a job as an Associate Producer for MTV news. She later went on to work as a TV reporter for NBC, before finally being recruited to join the team that started blip.tv.
What to learn from her: If you’re trying to launch a new venture or just get noticed, Kaplan thinks the best thing you can do is just listen. “Listening is way more valuable than talking. When blip.tv first launched, we learned this the hard way. We got no users for the first month.” When you do talk, “ask questions, ask what problem do you have that we could solve? What’s missing?” This way you can find a viable niche and make your mark, or a void and fill it.
Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins, and Lisa Stone
What they’ve done: Five years ago, most female bloggers didn’t view their dispatches as anything more than an avocation. There was no community, and the scope for interaction was limited. Then three women came along and changed things. Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone set up BlogHer, initially a conference aiming to provide empowerment and create community by bringing women bloggers together offline. Now BlogHer is also a full-time community for women on the Web to come together online, regardless of subject matter.
How they got there: Page, who has a theatre degree from San Jose State University, held various jobs in commodities and high tech, before starting her own blog, Worker Bees, to help organizations use blogs as communications and marketing tools. Des Jardins, who has a BA in English Literature from the University of Illinois, worked in a variety of media jobs before BlogHer. Stone graduated from Wellesley with a degree in Political Science, worked at the Oakland Tribune, CNN and Women.com (later acquired by iVillage). In 2001, she became the first Internet journalist ever awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. She later went on to help launch, American Lawyer Media, Law.com’s legal blog network, Knight Ridder Digital’s Thatsracin.com, and Glam Media.
What to learn from them: If you have a company or brand the best catalyst for success is to start communicating. “There are no spectators, whether you’re a new start-up or a 100-plus year-old brand. Start writing, commenting and participating right now. Whether or not your company has a blog or participates in social media, your competitors and your consumers definitely do,” says Stone.
Arianna Huffington
What she’s done: With the launch of her eponymous group blog, Huffington transformed news delivery into a conversation. Launched initially as a left-leaning, politics-focused aggregate blog in 2005 (often seen as the antidote to the Drudge Report), the Huffington Post went on to incorporate original reporting and widen its focus to include media, business, the environment and other areas. With posts from hundreds of bloggers, including big-name celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Adam McKay and Jamie Lee Curtis, the site has succeeded in securing reader engagement and commentary on an unprecedented scale.
How she got there: Born in Greece, Huffington moved to England at the age of 16, where she attended Cambridge University. After graduating with an MA in Economics, she moved to London where she lived with famed political columnist Bernard Levin and penned her first novel. She moved to New York in 1980 and married politically conservative oil millionaire Michael Huffington in 1986. For the next several years, Huffington was a staunch Republican, though her views noticeably shifted towards the late nineties. In 2003, she ran unsuccessfully as an independent against Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace California Governor Gray Davis, before finally starting the Huffington Post in 2005. “Bringing together people and facilitating interesting conversations has always been part of my life — thanks to my Greek DNA. With The Huffington Post, the idea was to take those conversations and bring them into cyberspace, creating a one-stop site for news and opinion with an attitude, in real-time,” she says.
What to learn from her: Don’t always take a medium’s so-called limitations at face value. In Huffington’s able hand, blogs became primary news sources-not merely sources of commentary. And aim to conquer your doubts. “Fearlessness is not the absence of fear, it’s the mastery of fear,” she says. “Overcoming fear is, I think, the most important lesson in terms of achieving success.”
Cyan Banister
What she does: Recognizing market potential in the primordial instinct to ogle (and be olged), Cyan Banister, co-founder of Zivity.com, turned the Hot-Or-Not phenomenon into a profit-making enterprise as well as an online community. For a subscription of $10 a month, members can vote on — and connect with — their favorite models, who submit their own photos and get 40% of the proceeds.
How she got there: A high school dropout, Banister joined the working world when she was just 16. “My school was learning on the job; being surrounded by peers.” She has a managerial background, primarily in tech, working at email security provider IronPort Systems. She also worked as the CTO for the Women’s Economic Agenda Project for a short stint, where she helped train women in prison or in other disadvantaged positions to develop job skills.
What you can learn from her: You don’t need formal training to launch a successful company. Banister designed her site and conceived of Zivity’s core business model without a traditional educational or business background. Rather than being deterred by how many men you’re working with, Banister’s advice is to forget your gender. “Take risks and don’t focus on yourself too much. You need to stick your neck out there and just do it in order to be successful.”
Gina Bianchini
What she does: The co-founder and CEO of Ning, a social networking platform that allows people to create and customize their own social networks, Bianchini was featured on Fast Company’s cover earlier this year. Before Ning launched in 2004, users didn’t have the ability to fraternize with others who shared their interests in quite the same way, or on the same scale. The site currently has about 575,000 social networks, growing at a rate of about 2000 a day, with new ones from DoodleKisses (a club for Labradoodle and Goldendoodle owners) to Give it to me Raw (a community for oven-shunning vegans.)
How she got there: Bianchini has a BA in political science and an MBA from Stanford. She worked at various jobs in the financial sector-including a stint at Goldman Sachs-before founding an ad analytics company called Harmonic Communications, which was bought by ad agency Dentsu. She co-founded Ning with Marc Andreessen, one of Harmonic’s board members.
What to learn from her: If you’re trying to start a company, remember the two C’s: control and customization. While networking platforms existed before Ning, none offered users the same kind of ownership.
Caterina Fake
What she does: The co-founder of Flickr (now owned by Yahoo), Fake was one of the pioneers of the site-based photo sharing model. Before Flickr, sharing photographs meant sending them piecemeal as email attachments. The site is now widely used as a photo repository by individuals and companies alike.
How she got there: Fake graduated with a BA in English from Vassar. Her first online job was as lead designer for Organic Online, a web development agency where she worked on websites for Fortune 500 companies. She went on to work as the art director for Salon.com, and then as the creative director of Yellowball, an online space enabling people to create stories and animations collaboratively. She created Flickr in 2004 with her husband Stewart Butterfield. The site came about serendipitously: it started out as a web based multi-player game and, due to a deficit of funds, ended up as a photo-sharing site.
What to learn from her: If you’re tenacious about incubating your own business, you could reap a nice fortune. Yahoo paid Fake and her husband $35 million for Flickr. The tradeoff? Giving up control. Fake and her husband recently resigned from their posts at Flickr.
Mena Trott
What she’s done: Trott was instrumental in creating the easy-to-use tools that turned Grandma into a blogger. Along with her husband, Ben, she co-founded and designed the products for Six Apart, the company responsible for Movable Type (a blogging software), TypePad (a blog hosting service), Vox (a blogging platform) and LiveJournal (which allows you to create a free blog, private journal, discussion forum or social network). Before Six Apart took off, bloggers had to hand code their work.
How she got there: While at Santa Clara University, Trott worked for an on-campus webmaster, fueling her interest in the web. After graduating with a BA in English from Santa Clara University in ‘99, she worked for a short stint as a designer with an educational software company, before eventually starting Six Apart. The company is named for the six-day age difference between its married co-founders.
What to learn from her: Don’t dismiss the potential of your hobbies: what begins as a dalliance can morph into a multi-million dollar business.
Kaliya Hamlin
What she’s done: An evangelist for the OpenID community, Hamlin propagates the use of one identity (one screen name and one password) across all websites. Her cause: to simplify the online experience and encourage mobility between sites. She spreads her message via conferences (like SuperNova and Web 2.0 Expo) and Internet Identity workshops.
How she got there: While studying for a degree in political economy and human rights at UC Berkeley, Hamlin worked for nonprofits focused on nonviolence and spiritual activism. After graduating in 2003, she came across a white paper entitled the “Augmented Social Network”, which propelled her to develop an interest in user-centric identity. She later began working as an evangelist for the Identity Commons, trying to promote the creation of an open identity layer for the Internet, while simultaneously emphasizing the individual’s privacy and control. In 2005, she organized the first Internet Identity Workshop.
What to learn from her: If you find a cause you really dig, it’s never too late to become a part of it – you certainly don’t need a related college degree. The downside – saving the world usually doesn’t pay and you’ll probably have to keep your day job too. Hamlin makes most of her money facilitating conferences. She’s also reinvested half of her income into promoting the concept of user-centric identity.
Manifesting Abundance
Understanding the Law of Attraction
You likely know someone who is a great at manifesting. You may even have felt somewhat jealous of that person because it appears they have everything, seemingly getting these things with little effort as if they were born under a lucky star. Well, it may be that they very well were born with the knowledge of manifesting already intact. I say this because I believe once we learn something in another life (Yes, I believe in past lives, parallel existences) it is not lost, and that we can choose to bring those talents with us as we move into a new life experience.
Attracting Abundance is Knowledge
As any other skill people have, manifesting is no different from playing the piano or flipping pancakes in the air. How good you are at it depends on how efficient you have become at performing it. And, although some of us are better at certain skills that doesn’t mean the rest of us, with practice, can’t improve or even surpass the talent expressed by another. Those people who are efficient in attracting have trained their minds to focus on their desires. They have learned it so well that they often times don’t even realize how they do it. Abundance comes to them naturally. They wouldn’t blink an eye if someone suggested they don’t deserve something, it isn’t part of their reality.
Grasping a better understanding of how the “Law of Attraction” works is the first step in bringing abundance into your life.
Law of Attraction
We create our own reality. We attract those things in our life (money, relationships, employment) that we focus on. I wish I could tell you that it is as simple as stating an affirmation, but no affirmation is going to work if your thoughts or feelings are negating the positive.
When we focus on “having less” then we create that experience for ourselves. When we focus on “I hate my job” then we will never notice the aspects of our employment that might be satisfying. Basically, just wanting something isn’t going to bring that to us when we continue to obsess on the not having of that something. All we will experience is “not having” and will be ultimately blocking our true desires.
Better to focus on a particular object or scenario rather than on winnings or cash.
Another mistake that we make is that we tend to think of abundance in terms of how much money we have in our bank accounts. I personally think focusing on winning the lottery is a fruitless event. Focusing on winning the lottery is kind of like focusing on “not having.” I say this because of some discussions I’ve had with those who have held this desire, They have shared what they would do with the winnings if they won. Yet, some of the things they say they would do with the money they could actually already be doing with their current incomes on a smaller scale, but they don’t. Why not? Because they cling to what they perceive as their “meager savings” with the attitude that they don’t have enough out of fear. Here is an example of this:
A man’s mother owns a car that is need of repair. The son says “If I won the lottery I would buy my mother a new car.” But actually, the son has the means to take her car to the mechanics and pay out $400 needed in repairs to assure that his mom has a dependable car to drive back and forth to the market. When asked why he doesn’t then just go ahead and have her current car repaired, he answers, “Well gee, I only have $800 in the bank, and doing that would knock out half my savings. What happens if my car needs repairs next week or my daughter gets sick and needs to see a doctor?”
So you see, the person’s true focus is on “not enough” rather than being focused on winning the lottery. When we are focused on “not enough” it won’t ever matter how much money we have, it will never be enough. Suggesting that he pay for his mother’s car repairs brought his fears out into the open. It would be nice if the fellow could trust that by helping his mother and paying for the repairs he would not put himself at financial risk. But for the time being, while he feels he must hold onto that fear reality, I would suggest this man focus on visualizing his mother driving safely to and from the market in comfort and without experiencing any mechanical breakdowns. This would be a positive image/thought to get that picture to become a reality. Another suggestion would be to introduce the Law of Attraction to his mother so she can start attracting a new car for herself among other things she might desire.
Expectations and the Law of Attraction
One of the most important steps in consciously using the Law of Attraction is learning to change our expectations. Why? Because the Universe delivers exactly what we expect to see. Our expectations are formed on the foundation of our existing beliefs.
If we believe ourselves to be lacking financially, we will expect to see a bigger proportion of bills than income – and the universe delivers. If we believe we are sick, overweight or weak, we expect to feel pain and fatigue – and the universe delivers. If we believe ourselves to be unworthy of love, we expect not to be loved – and guess what the universe delivers?
Think back to the experiences you’ve had in your past and ask yourself if you got what you were expecting. Have you ever uttered statements like these?
I just can’t get ahead!
I’m so sick of struggling.
Everything always goes wrong for me.
If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.
This is too good to be true, something’s going to go wrong.
Words like these are actually self-fulfilling prophesies. You are, in effect, placing your order with the universe at the moment you begin feeling the feelings behind the words (yes, even before you SPEAK the words!). The universe doesn’t care what words you use, it pays attention to your vibrations – the energetic signal you’re sending out. That signal is formed by your beliefs and expectations.
So how do we change our expectations? Is it possible? Absolutely!
One of the most powerful things you can begin doing is consciously expecting the best. Throughout the course of your day, take a few moments to pause and expect something wonderful. Say to yourself, “Today is going to be a great day!” Try to find the positive expectation in every experience. If your boss asks to speak with you privately, rather than expecting him to reprimand or fire you, expect him to praise you and give you a pay raise! Rather than expecting to see bills in your mailbox when you get home, expect to see a check.
The more you can keep this feeling of happy expectation in your heart, the more often you will see results that directly mirror your expectations.
Does it sound unbelievable? Far-fetched? Try this little experiment:
Before leaving your home one morning, say to yourself, “Sometime today I will see the image of a bumblebee (or any image you choose – it should be something you wouldn’t ordinarily see during your daily activities). I choose to attract this image into my awareness, and it will jump out at me so I don’t miss it. I KNOW I will see this bumblebee, and that will prove to me that my expectations DO affect my experiences.” As you speak these words, infuse them with power and conviction! Believe with all of your heart that you will indeed attract this image to yourself. Then let go of it and continue with your day like usual.
If you don’t see the image you’ve chosen, you know you didn’t put enough power and faith into your expectation!
The first time I tried this experiment, it didn’t work for me. Looking back, I’m aware that I didn’t really BELIEVE I would see a bumblebee. I hoped I would, but I was doubtful. Still, I decided to try again the next day. That’s when I really energized my expectation with unshakable faith and conviction. I was DETERMINED to see a bumblebee sometime during my day, and I wouldn’t accept any other outcome. Boy did I get what I asked for! All that day, I saw bumblebees wherever I went. Bumblebee logos on passing trucks, references to bees mentioned on the radio, a cashier wearing a bumblebee pin when I did some shopping, and my husband watching a television special on bees when I got home!
Once you begin to see that you can influence your experiences even in small ways, imagine the sense of empowerment you’ll feel when you decide to expect something better in the bigger aspects of your life. Try it, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!
Mind your manners to save your business, experts tell Facebook
Following the common sense and time-tested advice of Mister Rogers and Miss Manners could help Facebook end the nightmare that threatens to harm its business, affect its relationship with advertising partners, and erode its end-users’ trust.
12/6/2007 6:00:00 AM By: Juan Carlos Perez
Facebook could have avoided the strident, weeks-long controversy engulfing its Beacon ad system if, when designing and deploying it, the social-networking company had followed basic social etiquette principles, such as being considerate and candid.
It’s not too late, though. Following the common sense and time-tested advice of Mister Rogers and Miss Manners could help Facebook end the nightmare that threatens to harm its business, affect its relationship with advertising partners, and erode its end-users’ trust.
That’s the consensus from several industry observers and online privacy experts regarding the embattled Beacon, introduced several weeks ago to a sustained chorus of boos.
“Facebook created what it thought was a clever program and a lot of people didn’t like it,” said industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence.
Beacon, part of the company’s new ad platform, tracks certain actions of Facebook users on some external sites, like Blockbuster and Fandango, in order to report those actions back to users’ Facebook friends network.
The idea: to generate advertising that is more effective because it is intricately combined with people’s social circle, so that products and services are promoted in a more organic way via the actions of friends and family.
More than 40 Web sites have signed up for Beacon, although not all have implemented the system. Off-Facebook activities that can be broadcast to one’s Facebook friends include purchasing a product, signing up for a service and including an item on a wish list.
Responding to a round of initial complaints that the program was difficult to understand, manage and avoid, Facebook tweaked it last Thursday, making its workings more explicit and giving people more control over it.
Although the changes didn’t go as far as many had hoped, they were generally seen as encouraging. However, the calm didn’t last long. On Friday, a CA researcher detailed tests showing that Beacon is more intrusive and stealthy than Facebook had acknowledged until then.
Stefan Berteau found that Beacon tracks users even if they are logged off from the social-networking site and have declined having their activities broadcast to friends.
In this case, users aren’t informed that data on their activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook or given the option to block that information from being transmitted, according to Berteau, senior research engineer at CA’s Threat Research Group.
If a user has ever checked the option for Facebook to “remember me” — which saves the user from having to log on to the site upon every return to it — Facebook can tie his activities on third-party Beacon sites directly to him, even if he’s logged off and has opted out of the broadcast. If he has never chosen this option, the information still flows back to Facebook, although without it being tied to his Facebook ID, according to Berteau.
Moreover, Berteau also found that Beacon doesn’t limit its tracking to Facebook members. It actually tracks activities from all users in its third-party partner sites, including from people who have never signed up with Facebook or who have deactivated their accounts.
In those cases, Beacon captures detailed data on what users do on these external partner sites and sends it back to Facebook along with users’ IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, although there is no Facebook ID to tie to the data.
The information captured by Beacon in these cases includes the addresses of Web pages visited by the user and a string with the action taken in the partner site, Berteau said.
Facebook’s response to Berteau’s research has been a brief statement in which it confirms the findings, but says that in the case of logged-off users, deactivated accounts and nonmembers, Facebook deletes the data upon receiving it.
Facebook’s admission of Berteau’s findings contradicted earlier statements from company officials.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook’s reaction — brief and lacking details — has done little to calm the concerns and complaints arising from Berteau’s research.
“Some say that if you belong to a social-networking site, you’ve given up your privacy. This shows that Facebook is the one that’s really overreaching, collecting a lot of information from all over the place,” said attorney Guilherme Roschke, a Skadden Fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
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