Retail Week
November 10, 2006
Woman's touch

BYLINE: By James Thompson

LENGTH: 1533 words

HIGHLIGHT: DIY and electricals retailers have done little to target women in the past, but now several are changing tactics to woo these prime spenders

Given that women make up half the population, some retail sectors have done a poor job of targeting them so far. In particular, some DIY and electricals groups have, until recently, clung to the comfort blanket that is their core customer base, notably male technology geeks and tradesmen.

All that is now changing and fast. DSGi-owned PC World unveiled its remodelled store in Colchester last week (Retail Week, November 3), designed to extend its reach beyond its traditional male customer base.

In the home and DIY sector, following in the footsteps of rival Homebase, B&Q has made a big effort over the past few years to extend its offer to include more aspirational home improvement products and soften store layouts.

But what is driving such shifts in strategy and what are the crucial ingredients for making stores a magnet for women and families?

For myriad reasons, women have made massive strides towards financial and social independence over the past 30 years. Verdict chairman Richard Hyman says: "More women are living by themselves, more marriages end in separation, women are more confident than they used to be and they have some financial independence."

For instance, women hold 40 per cent of professional jobs now, compared with 10 per cent in the 1970s, according to Equal Opportunities Commission's 2006 data.

In fact, Hyman is surprised that more retailers have not tied their colours to the female mast sooner. "Women are much more important in the retail market than men. So what has taken these retailers so long? The fact is that retailing is really about women. They are the prime movers, they spend more and make the major decisions," says Hyman. The fact that many women go shopping with their children and influence their partners' purchases is another important reason why they are the champions of retail expenditure.

When targeting the female purse, retailers in traditionally male sectors need to refine their entire strategy, including product offer, point-of-sale merchandising, store layout - for example, by providing space for prams around tills - and installation services. "They have to understand what drives female demand, as opposed to male demand. Women are less interested in gadgets per se - they are interested in what they do for them," Hyman points out.

Tim Greenhalgh, managing creative director at design consultancy Fitch, agrees that women place a great deal of value on product explanation. Retailers, therefore, have to shift their focus from "killer product categories towards killer explanations", he says. "The first thing a woman says is, 'What can it do for me?'. The first thing a bloke says is, 'How many megahertz does it have'?" argues Greenhalgh.

Alongside explanations, providing female customers with a vision of how products fit into the home is equally important. This is all about capturing the home-improvement zeitgeist, where people increasingly see their home as presenting an image of themselves to the outside world.

Arguably, this is far easier for DIY merchants to achieve than electricals retailers, because all-singing, all-dancing showrooms give customers an instant snapshot of the possibilities. For instance, B&Q is revamping its 114 Warehouse stores over the next few years.

B&Q marketing and customer proposition director Jo Kenrick says: "These revamps include more shop-within-a-shop sections in areas such as lighting, flooring, paint, kitchens and bathrooms. Within kitchen and bathrooms, we are also increasing the number of styled room settings. The decorative areas of the stores have less industrial racking, so the merchandise can be displayed in a softer setting."

In the electricals sector, the same showroom principles are being adopted by retailers. "A lot of men want as many wires as possible, so it all looks as high-tech as possible. But women want to know, 'Does it look good in my lounge?'," says Hyman.

For instance, PC World has tapped into this opportunity by opening its Room of the Future in a few bigger stores, including Colchester and London's Tottenham Court Road. The room showcases the latest gadgets and gizmos in situ, emphasising their uses and benefits, rather than technical features.

In addition, PC World provides a service where experts visit a customer's home and give them a quote for installation. PC World commercial director Bryan Magrath says: "We can demonstrate the opportunities, visit you and come back with a proposal for your home, including cutting holes in the wall for TV recesses or cable channelling and things like that."

Behind such initiatives is the convergence of technology towards integrated home entertainment systems. With mature technology at their fingertips, PC World's customers can use a single console to control an integrated home-entertainment system, which might include a PC, stereo, TV and DVD player.

PC World has not neglected its Colchester store's layout either. It has created an experience area in the centre where customers can test a variety of products, such as computer games that can be sampled sitting in large game pods. This central area is "more experiential than sales driven", says Magrath.

Rival electricals retailer Comet has also introduced a format in three stores this year that is less "clinical and functional", according to Comet category manager for portable technology Ewan Pinder. "We have the new destination format, which is a dramatic change in the way we lay out technology. It is much less clinical, functional and warehouse-like," he says. The Comet stores feature more yellow and purple colours.

On a more basic level, Visual Thinking brand director Karl McKeever claims all traditionally male-oriented retailers could learn a thing or two from the clothing sector. "Look and feel is incredibly important and to try to imitate some of the successful strategies from the fashion sector, such as more space around the point of sale and flagging up promotions clearly, not just to communicate price," he says. Other simple refinements include decluttering stores and lowering fixtures.

US electricals giant Best Buy is seen as a textbook example of how a retailer can plug into the needs of female shoppers and families. Speaking at the Marketing Society's Retail Forum last month, Best Buy executive vice-president John Walden said: "Customers want time back and respect. We introduced personal shopping assistants, largely women, who walk through the store and talk in a language people understand. We also created children's areas."

While changing store layouts has been a gradual evolution, a revolution is under way in services provided by DIY and electricals retailers. This summer, B&Q started a low-key trial of home installation services, for products including bathrooms and kitchens, from two stores in London in an effort to tap into the growing Do It For Me market. The retailer also runs DIY tutorials in its largest stores, including some dedicated classes for women. They comprise hour-long tutorials on subjects such as how to change a tap or do basic plumbing.

On a much grander scale, DSGi launched its Tech Guys service in September, designed to replicate the success of Best Buy's Geek Squad service, which is itself due to launch in the UK in January, in partnership with Carphone Warehouse.

The Tech Guys provides remote and in-store advice and repair services for customers, irrespective of where they bought the equipment. Significantly, PC World has made a big play of locating its sizeable Tech Guys advice desk and Collect@Store service at the entrance of its larger stores.

Changing female customers' perception can also be a longer-term project for retailers. To try to achieve this goal, Comet introduced Gadget Angels in June - an all-female team of experts who will spearhead a campaign to break down female techno-fear. The project, named after the hit 1970s series and movie Charlie's Angels, launched following a study of 1,000 customers. Pinder says: "It is about communicating technology to women who like technology and yet who are a bit frightened of technology." The Gadget Angels' material is also used in stores to educate staff and associated ads and features will run in newspapers and magazines, including Heat and Metro, ahead of Christmas.

It is fair to say that most DIY and electricals retailers have been slow out of the blocks in targeting women, but all the signs suggest that times are changing. Kenrick is fully aware of the female goldmine. She says: "The UK home improvement market is becoming more female influenced. We estimate that 70 per cent to 80 per cent of home improvement projects are initiated by the female partner. Furthermore, the rise in numbers of women living on their own has acted as a catalyst for many to take on DIY jobs that were often seen as jobs for the boys."

Pinder adds: "I think it is a huge opportunity. Women want technology and they like technology. We believe we have to adapt the way we sell technology to the female market."

However, to really woo women into their stores, retailers may have to look at themselves. "The fact that most of the management at the so-called macho retailers is male places them at a disadvantage," warns Hyman.

---

January 11, 2007

State of the Art

Apple Waves Its Wand at the Phone

By DAVID POGUE

SAN FRANCISCO

Remember the fairy godmother in “Cinderella”? She’d wave her wand and turn some homely and utilitarian object, like a pumpkin or a mouse, into something glamorous and amazing, like a carriage or fully accessorized coachman.

Evidently, she lives in some back room at Apple.

Every time Steve Jobs spies some hopelessly ugly, complex machine that cries out for the Apple touch — computers, say, or music players — he lets her out.

At the annual Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Mr. Jobs demonstrated the latest result of godmother wand-waving. He granted the wishes of millions of Apple followers and rumormongers by turning the ordinary cellphone into ... the iPhone.

At the moment, the iPhone is in an advanced prototype stage, which I was allowed to play with for only an hour; the finished product won’t be available in the United States until June, or in Europe until the fourth quarter. So this column is a preview, not a review.

Already, though, one thing is clear: the name iPhone may be doing Apple a disservice. This machine is so packed with possibilities that the cellphone may actually be the least interesting part.

As Mr. Jobs pointed out in his keynote presentation, the iPhone is at least three products merged into one: a phone, a wide-screen iPod and a wireless, touch-screen Internet communicator. That helps to explain its price: $499 or $599 (with four or eight gigabytes of storage).

As you’d expect of Apple, the iPhone is gorgeous. Its face is shiny black, rimmed by mirror-finish stainless steel. The back is textured aluminum, interrupted only by the lens of a two-megapixel camera and a mirrored Apple logo. The phone is slightly taller and wider than a Palm Treo, but much thinner (4.5 by 2.4 by 0.46 inches).

You won’t complain about too many buttons on this phone; it comes very close to having none at all. The front is dominated by a touch screen (320 by 480 pixels) operated by finger alone. The only physical buttons, in fact, are volume up/down, ringer on/off (hurrah!), sleep/wake and, beneath the screen, a Home button.

The iPhone’s beauty alone would be enough to prompt certain members of the iPod cult to dig for their credit cards. But its Mac OS X-based software makes it not so much a smartphone as something out of “Minority Report.”

Take the iPod features, for example. As on any iPod, scrolling through lists of songs and albums is a blast — but there’s no scroll wheel. Instead, you flick your finger on the glass to send the list scrolling freely, according to the speed of your flick. The scrolling spins slowly to a stop, as though by its own inertia. The effect is both spectacular and practical, because as the scrolling slows, you can see where you are before flicking again if necessary.

The same flicking lets you flip through photos or album covers as though they’re on a 3-D rack. All of this — photos, music collection, address book, podcasts, videos and so on — are synched to the iPhone from Apple’s iTunes software running on a Mac or Windows PC, courtesy of the charging/synching dock that is included.

Movies are especially satisfying on this iPod. That’s partly because of the wide-screen orientation, and partly because the screen is so much bigger (3.5 inches) and sharper (160 pixels per inch) than those on other iPods.

The iPhone can get onto the Internet in two ways: using Wi-Fi, at least when you’re in the presence of a wireless hot spot, or using Cingular’s disappointingly slow Edge network.

That’s right: the iPhone’s exclusive carrier will be Cingular. (Nor is the phone “unlocked”; you can’t use it with any other carrier.) At least it’s a quad-band G.S.M. phone, so it will work overseas.

You can also conduct text-message conversations that appear as a continuous chat thread. And like any smartphone, the iPhone can download e-mail from standard accounts at regular intervals. In fact, Yahoo will offer free “push” e-mail — that is, messages will arrive on the iPhone in real time, just as on a corporate BlackBerry.

The iPhone is not, however, a BlackBerry killer. The absence of a physical keyboard makes it versatile, but also makes typing tedious.

Instead of raised alphabet keys, you get virtual keys on the screen. They’re fairly small, and of course you can’t feel them. So typing is slow going, especially for the fat of finger.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be especially precise. Even if you hit the wrong “keys” accidentally, the super-smart software considers adjacent keys — and corrects your typos automatically. If what you actually managed to type is “wrclme,” the software proposes “welcome.” You tap the Space bar to accept the fix. It works beautifully.

The real magic, however, awaits when you browse the Web. You get to see the entire Web page on the iPhone’s screen, although with tiny type. To enlarge it, you can double-tap any spot; then you drag your finger to scroll in any direction.

Alternatively, you can use a brand-new feature that Apple calls multitouch: you slide your thumb and forefinger together (like pinching) or apart on the glass. As you do so, the Web page before you grows or shrinks in real time, as though it’s printed on a sheet of latex. It works with photos, too, and it’s wicked cool.

All of this is cooked up with Apple’s traditional secret sauce of simplicity, intelligence and whimsy. It’s these ingredients, not the features themselves, that inspire such technolust in Applephiles.

For example, voice mail messages appear in a list, like an e-mail in-box; you can listen to them in any order. A proximity sensor turns off the touch screen when the phone is up to your ear, saving power and avoiding accidental touches. The screen image rotates when you turn the phone to see, for example, a landscape-orientation photo. A light sensor brightens the screen in bright light. Finger smudges and streaks are inevitable, but are visible only when the screen is turned off. (They disappear with a wipe on your sleeve.)

The speaker is on the bottom edge, rather than the back, where it would be muffled when the phone is set down. The optional tiny Bluetooth wireless earpiece has its own little charging hole in the iPhone’s charging/synching dock — and it snaps in magnetically for convenience. Apple says that this earpiece “pairs” with the iPhone automatically, sparing you the usual ritual of pressing buttons in a baffling sequence.

Nonetheless, the iPhone won’t be the smartphone for everybody. You may well consider the Cingular exclusivity or the price a deal-breaker. You may also be disappointed that the iPhone can’t open Microsoft Office documents, as the Treo can (although Apple says it can open PDF documents), or wonder why it’s not a 3G cellphone that can exploit higher-speed, next-generation cellular towers as they arrive in the coming years. And you may worry about putting all your digital eggs into one losable, droppable, glass-front basket.

Note, too, that the software is still unfinished, and many questions are still unanswered. Will you be able to turn your own songs into ring tones? Will there be a voice recorder? Will the camera record video? Can you use Skype to make free Internet calls? Will the battery really last for five hours of talking, video and Web browsing (or 16 hours of audio playback)? Will you someday be able to buy songs and videos from the iTunes Store right on the phone?

At this point, Apple doesn’t yet have the answers, or isn’t revealing them.

What it does have, however, is a real shot at redefining the cellphone. How many millions of people are, at this moment, carrying around both an iPod and a cellphone? How many would love to carry a single combo device that imposes no feature or design penalties? Considering that the cellphone is many people’s most personal gadget, how many would leap at the chance to replace their current awkward models with something with the class, the looks and the effortlessness of an iPod?

Apple has done its part: it has packed more features into less space, and with more elegance, than anyone before it. The rest is up to the godmother.

E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com

The Washington Times
January 21, 2006 Saturday
Does it pass the wife check?

BYLINE: By Jen Haberkorn, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

SECTION: PAGE ONE; Pg. A01

LENGTH: 621 words

Eyeing an intricate DVD player or clunky home theater speakers? Better check with your spouse first.

The idea of checking with a mate before purchasing a big-ticket item may not be a new idea, but its name, spouse acceptance factor - usually called wife acceptance factor for the greater number of men interested in electronics - is building steam among technology gurus and electronics manufacturers.

Women control 88 percent of electronics purchases, whether they make the purchase or influence what their spouse buys, according to research by the Consumer Electronics Association. Whether an item passes the wife acceptance factor, or WAF, typically depends on price, design and complexity.

Steve Makofsky, a software engineer and self-described techie, said the WAF is growing among his techie cohort.

"I'm hearing it more and more, especially with friends who are married and trying some more of the out-there electronics," said Mr. Makofsky, of Sammamish, Wash. "It drives what you're purchasing."

He felt the ramifications of the WAF when he installed a home theater television in his and his wife's bedroom.

"I went to turn on the TV and he said, 'not that remote. We have to boot it up first,'" said his wife, Liz. "You have to be kidding me that we have to boot up the TV in the bedroom."

The system was removed and they agreed to limit the extensive electronics to his home theater room and office, they said.

"Guys are happy to have monster speakers with wires and big amps all over the place but whoever the guy's married to isn't," said Ray Lepper, president of Home Media, a Richmond company that can creatively install electronics in walls, behind cabinets and even behind artwork.

Media rooms end up with a price tag between $8,000 and $40,000, including the electronic gear, he said.

Scott Stein, a Bethesda technology consultant, and his wife, Meredith, agree on most major purchases before going to the store and have an understanding that they each know how to stick to a budget.

But he recently bought a television without getting the OK.

"For the most part, she was fine with it," said Mr. Stein, 28. "We had had some discussions about the purchase in the past where she had tried to express some limits on a reasonable amount. I somewhat exceeded the limits."

The price came out about 30 percent more than what they agreed upon, but it didn't lead to a fight.

"She appreciates the nicer toys, too," he said.

Most women like technology, but in a different way than men do, said Michelle Miller, a marketing consultant and partner at Wizard of Ads marketing firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Men like hearing about a product's speed, size, strength and accessories from salespeople, Ms. Miller said.

"But if you talk about what technology does for [women's] lives, they love it," she said, adding that women relate to technology in terms of how it can make their lives better.

Electronics companies are responding by changing the way they design and market their products to correspond with the influence of design-conscious spouses.

Wisdom Audio, a specialty electronics company in Carson City, Nev., touted its Adrenaline Speaker Series, which can be placed inside walls and features paintable grilles, as having a high WAF.

"The Adrenaline series are generally regarded as having the highest WAF of any audiophile-quality speaker in the industry," a recent company release said.

In early 2005, electronics company Best Buy changed its in-store signs to focus on how a product is used instead of its gadget details to target women, said spokesman Brian Lucas.

"Part of it is getting women into the store more. They will walk through and see a home theater and they might suggest a change," Mr. Lucas said. "That makes it a lot easier."

New Scientist, August 4, 2007 v195 i2615 p24(2)

If a phone can do the job, who needs a PC? Cellphones with games, video and photo messaging are helping people in poorer countries do business.(Technology)(Report)

Jessica Marshall

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2007 For more science news and comments see http://www.newscientist.com.
THEY were once simple little devices that we used to call our friends from the road to say we were running late. But no longer. As the unfettered drooling over the iPhone has demonstrated, these days we like our cellphones to come customised for our amusement with games, video cameras and internet access.

Smartphones may seem like a frivolous indulgence for rich westerners, but it turns out that their added features can be harnessed to help people in poorer countries do business, educate their children and even hold those in power to account.

"Smartphones are probably much more revolutionary for developing countries," says John Canny, an engineer at the University of California, Berkeley," who is creating educational video games that run on smartphones (See "Learn English by phone"). "Here smartphones are a bit gimmicky. In the developing regions you have hostile conditions for a PC so phones have a lot of potential to become the computing platform for people," says Canny.

Being able to communicate in real time via speech and text using basic cellphones has already proved invaluable for communities that were never connected by landlines. Ajedi-ka, an organisation that works to promote human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, distributes phones to local teachers, elders and business leaders so that they can report incidents of children being drafted as soldiers. The phones make reporting faster and easier. Meanwhile, health workers across the developing world have started using cellphones to monitor disease outbreaks in real time. In Kenya phones are being turned into mini-ATM machines via Vodafone's M-PESA program, which allows users to load money onto their phones in shops and then send it via a text message to someone else, in their village say. They can also withdraw the money at another location using a password, which in Kenya can be much safer than carrying cash.

For some financial uses, however, it is the phones' ability to take photos and record and send video clips that researchers believe will come in handy.

Micro-lending groups are typically run by women in rural areas who arrange small loans for each other or act as mediators between banks and the local community. They have proved to be a successful strategy in sparking business endeavours and combating poverty. But one problem is that these groups often keep poor accounts, which can make it difficult for banks or other lenders to invest in them with confidence.

"When banks are interested in lending to these people, if they're lucky the groups will have a stack of paper records," says Tapan Parikh, a computer scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle who works with micro-finance groups in India.

Typically, these records would include forms stating the agreed amount, duration of the loan and repayment receipts. Parikh learned that group members prefer the paper forms because many can't read and so fill them out by memorising which numbers go in which boxes. As a result, he stuck with paper but turned to camera-phones to make the accounting process more secure and transparent.

He created a new version of the paper forms, which look like the old ones except that a barcode has been added next to each box or section where you need to fill in numbers. Instead of filling out these new forms, you take a picture of each barcode with a cellphone. Software on the phone recognises the barcode and a message appears on the screen, prompting you to enter the figures that would have gone in the section that corresponds to that barcode. There is also a spoken version of the message to make things clearer for those who can't read. In this way, the borrower or lender scrolls through the whole form, taking snapshots of the barcodes and entering data via the phone's keypad. The result is an electronic version of the form, which is initially stored on the phone and later uploaded to a central server when the phone is near a mast.

Saving the information on a server makes accounting simpler as data can't easily be lost, and it provides a way for large banks that are considering investing in these small businesses to check how successful they are.

Parikh's system has another advantage, however: additional information, such as photos or videos, can be attached to the electronic form that was saved, and stored on the central server as well. In order to inform a potential lender of what exactly the business does, you might photograph a written description or send a video of the business in action. "You can capture data potentially in the local language or with people who can't read or write," says Parikh.

After running trials of the barcode system in communities in Tamil Nadu, India, Parikh has co-founded a company that will charge banks trying to decide where to invest for the data the system stores.

The forms can also be used by inspectors who certify rural farmers as organic or fair trade. By laminating the form s so that they can survive the rough and muddy conditions the inspectors face, the barcodes are being used to bring up the correct part of the electronic forms, allowing data gathered on site to be entered straight into the phone. Again, photos or videos can be attached.

Farmers can also use photo and video-recording facilities on cellphones to share information about farming practices. In India, the non-profit organisation Almost All Questions Answered (aAqua) already operates a network where farmers can send questions to agricultural experts via text message or the internet, and check crop price information. But it is only accessible to those who can read, says Srinivasan Keshav of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. "If you're educated, you can send text. If you're not, you need video or audio."

Keshav is working on ways to help farmers send videos from their cellphones in place of text and to make these videos searchable by other farmers.

He also sees other uses for video and photo sharing, such as tracking whether development funds assigned to build a dam, say, are being properly used. With videophones, whistle-blowers could publicise footage showing that a dam is not actually being built or that logging regulations are being breached. Keshav's group is trying to work out how to send such videos anonymously.

One problem with relying on video and photos is the expense. While the cost of the hardware will probably come down, sending photos or videos via a standard cellphone network is expensive because the files are large and take a long time to send. Using Wi-Fi to send messages, instead of cellphone networks, would provide more bandwidth and cost less. But although cellphone chips capable of Wi-Fi have been available for years, phone service providers have fought to keep them shut off, because people talking via Wi-Fi instead of the cellular networks would cut into their revenues.

Now that could change. Last month, T-Mobile tried to snag new customers by becoming the first US cellphone provider to allow users to talk via Wi-Fi whenever they were within range of a base station, from anywhere in the world, for a monthly fee of $10. Keshav hopes that allowing phones to use Wi-Fi networks wherever possible will also speed up the sending of video and pictures in the developing world and make it cheaper.

LEARN ENGLISH BY PHONE

It isn't just the photo and video features of smartphones that are useful to people in the developing world. The advanced graphics and high-speed chips they come with are being harnessed to build educational video games.

John Canny's group at the University of California, Berkeley, found that the language skills of some English teachers in Mysore, India, were lacking and that children were often kept away from school to help with chores. Yet 19 of 47 students had parents with cellphones.

To tackle the problem, they have created educational video games that run on cellphones. In one, based on the South Indian children's game Tree Tree, trees displaying different letters from the English alphabet are scattered around the screen. The player hears a letter pronounced and must move an on-screen figure under the tree whose letter was spoken while avoiding being caught by a "baddie". Another builds a knowledge of animal vocabulary: based on the game Frogger, where a player has to cross a road without being hit by traffic, children playing Canny's game must choose to move one of a number of animals across the road depending on an instruction spoken in English. The game can be adapted to teach the words for vegetables or colours as well.

The team is testing the games this summer to see whether they improve students' English. The next step is to allow students to collaborate on games via Bluetooth connections. Later the group plans to incorporate speech recognition, so students can get feedback on their pronunciation based on whether the phone software recognised what they said. Meanwhile, the company ZMQ Software Systems has developed Hit/education games for cellphone users in Africa and India.

Article A167430964

Americans' Technolust Spending Is as Hot and Heavy as Ever

USA TODAY
August 1, 2006 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
Study: Women like tech toys more than shoes

BYLINE: Edward C. Baig

SECTION: MONEY; Pg. 3B

LENGTH: 456 words

NEW YORK -- Is a plasma TV a girl's new best friend?

An Oxygen Network survey released today found that more than three out of four women said they'd choose the TV over a diamond solitaire necklace. Women preferred a top-of-the-line cellphone to designer shoes by a similar margin. And a little white iPod narrowly trumped a little black dress.

These are among the results of the Girls Gone Wired survey by market researcher TRU for Oxygen. TRU surveyed 1,400 women and 700 men 15 to 49 years old to compare tech attitudes among the sexes.

The findings suggest advertisers need to address a broad audience and not talk down to women. Advertisers are best served communicating lifestyle benefits of tech products by showing what's useful about them, rather than focusing on specifications, Oxygen says.

"There have been some missed opportunities to market consumer electronics to women," says Steve Koenig, senior manager of industry analysis for the Consumer Electronics Association, whose research reveals only subtle differences between the sexes in their attitudes toward technology.

In the Oxygen survey, 59% of women agreed with the statement "Women are much more tech savvy than they give themselves credit for." Among the men, just 38% agreed.

"Men and women are equally competent in the technology arena," says Oxygen CEO Geraldine Laybourne.

Katie Richardson, 25, a project manager for an elevator company in Chicago, says family members come to her for help setting up iTunes or fixing a digital camera. "I love figuring out all the different functions," she says.

Still, just 35% of women agreed that "most of the time people rely on me for technology help," vs. 54% of men.

However tech-savvy they are, women are typically the decision makers when it comes to buying.

"From every piece of data we've seen, by and large, household budgets are controlled by women," says Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a prominent venture-capital investment firm. But they are "far more oriented toward solutions rather than tools."

Kristen McDonnell, CEO of LimeLife, a producer of mobile content for women 15 to 35, agrees. "Women are power users of the Internet now in terms of MySpace pages, e-commerce and photo sharing."

New York City College of Technology radiology student Shavonn Tatum, 26, is passionate about gadgets. "I love technology and can't wait to graduate so I can buy things I really want," she says.

Comparing computer use
Percentage of people who regularly use the computer to:
Women Men
Shop online 64% 60%
Edit digital pictures 53% 48%
Access online health services 35% 22%
Listen to music 60% 72%
Listen to or view Internet media streams 45% 69%
Watch DVDs 35% 54%
Access porn online 6% 38%
Source: Oxygen

The International Herald Tribune
September 8, 2007 Saturday
Social networking catering to older set;
New Web sites look for a niche among tech-savvy baby boomers

BYLINE: Matt Richtel - The New York Times Media Group

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 901 words

DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO

Silicon Valley's next new thing? Old people.

Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of social networking sites designed for their parents and grandparents. The sites have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya's Mom, Boomj and Boomertown.

Think Facebook with wrinkles.

The sites are being built to capture the attention of a generation of Internet users who have more money and leisure time than those several decades younger, and who may be more loyal than teens flitting from one trendy site to the next.

People who use the sites say they offer a smaller community of like-minded, and like-aged, people than on bigger sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster. The sites offer discussion and dating forums, photo-sharing, news and commentary, and copious chatter about diet, fitness and health care.

''I've discussed my divorce, my medical issues, and when do I dare go dating again,'' said Martha Starks, 52, a retired optician in Tucson, Arizona, who spends an hour or two each evening on Eons. ''I sure wouldn't discuss that stuff with a 20-year-old.''

She said she talked about fun things, too, like movies and music, with an audience that gets what she's saying, unlike a younger generation.

''They don't even know who Aretha is - she's the queen of soul!'' she said.

Social networking has thus far largely focused on executives in the business world and young people, because they are tech-savvy and treasured by Madison Avenue. But there are 78 million American baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964 - roughly three times more than there are American teenagers and 20-somethings - and most of the boomers are Internet users who learned computer skills in the workplace. The number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a market research firm.

Plus, according to the creators and financiers risking tens of millions of dollars building and marketing the new sites, older people have something the youngsters typically lack: patience. Older users, because they are relatively settled in their ways, will stick with a social network once they get comfortable with it, rather than capriciously skipping to the latest new site when fashion or hormones dictate, the network developers say.

Some prominent entrepreneurs and investors are banking on the prospect that social networks will become popular among this demographic.

In the past week, VantagePoint Venture Partners announced that it was leading a $16.5 million financing round into Multiply, which considers itself a social network for people who want to stay connected with existing friends and family, not those trying to hook up with new friends at the hottest club. VantagePoint knows something about what works in social networking: it was among the earliest MySpace investors.

Another start-up is TBD, which stands for ''To Be Determined,'' as in: just because you are not 20 and fitted with the hippest mobile gadget doesn't mean you are heading gently or otherwise into that good night.

The founder of TBD.com is Robin Wolaner, who created Parenting magazine in 1987. That year marked the start of at least seven parenting-oriented magazines. Wolaner said there has been the same sudden recognition of a need for Internet publishers to respond to the demands of older Americans.

She came up with the idea for the site, she said, ''when I was sitting around with friends and we said: 'We're not going to hang out at the AARP site. What is there for us?' ''

Plus, she said, she wanted to find a community where she could discuss her interest in getting an eye lift.

''There's a recognition that this generation now uses the Internet just like younger people,'' she said. ''The one thing this generation hasn't done yet is network online.''

TBD, which announced in August that it had received about $5 million in venture capital funding, lets users post profiles, designate friends, start and participate in discussions and get expert commentary. Recently on the front page was a link to a discussion on ''the best dishwasher to buy'' and another link to a discussion on ''how to kick start your libido.'' By contrast, the front page of MySpace that same day highlighted a video titled ''Daring Escalator Slide.''

Social networks aimed at older users are a big draw for investors and consumer products and services companies, said Susan Ayers Walker, a freelance technology journalist for the AARP, the group for people age 50 and older formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, and founder of SmartSilvers Alliance, which offers consultant services to businesses looking to connect with senior citizens.

''Not only do we have a lot more money, we pay a lot more attention to advertisers,'' she said.

Meg Dunn, 38, who is raising three kids in Fort Collins, Colorado, said she tried MySpace and Facebook but found that the short attention span of users did not suit her. She now uses Multiply, where she shares family photos with her relatives and gets into discussions on substantive topics, like a peculiar form of dementia called Pick's Disease that her father suffers from.

''I feel like I'm putting down roots, building relationships,'' she said. ''My feeling on MySpace is that people give you a poke and then they're gone and you never see them again.''