What if men weren't allowed on Facebook?
slate.comI think this is a pretty bad idea for a company unless it is a total passion project. Let's leave aside the boys v girls mentality that is sure to spring up and just look at it as an objective business.
1. Social is insanely crowded, it is such a crowded space and most of the decent niches have been carved out already. Other networks provide nearly perfect substitutes and are already well established an populated.
2. You eliminated 50% of your potential market before launch.
3. Is having 2X chromosomes something that is going to bring people together.
4. This can only work as either an anonymous network (because people will likely just want great opinions from other women who they ALREADY DO NOT KNOW IRL) and that means men and trolls will flood it
OR
5. It has to be a Facebook like social network that really tries to get an actual identity, in which case it is competing with Facebook, which is tough.
I don't see this becoming a huge thing. Would be surprised if they get a million users even in like a few years.
How about the service asking for a real identity but allowing validated users to post personal questions under psuedonames?
In terms of niches, the 2X chromosomes niche is much bigger than the programmer niche, but stack overflow is still successful.
I don't think that can really scale. How could you verify whether I am male or female without a reasonable amount of scrutiny, and then you are trusting them to keep your ID safe. In terms of the niche, that is my exact point. Maybe you are right, however I think the point of the niche is a small interconnected network of people who share one or a few traits deeply. SO is a bunch of people who are excited by one discipline and share knowledge surrounding it. Basically, being a woman probably has some idealogical overlap broadly, but it is a huge population to lump together. There will be conservatives, liberals, muslims, jews, christians, atheists, lawyers, people who have children, people who hate children, feminists, equalizes, stay-at-home moms, etc. The point is, people can connect on a lot of these levels but the narrower the focus the more tight the bond, IMO.
At the moment it seems to be invite only and asks for a twitter account, so that probably puts up enough of a barrier to casual trolls, others can be weeded out. Also I believe sites like facebook will sometimes ask for ID validation so that might not be a total showstopper.
In reality most sites that are ostensibly for "everyone" like reddit or tumblr end up being dominated by certain demographics and thus start to repel others. If they are smart they will make sure the demographic of women that they most appeal to are those with high disposable incomes or influence who are of the most value to advertisers.
I wonder how many times this has been tried.
There is Korean website I've known about for the past 10+ years - MissyUSA
It is a Alexa ~ 35,000 global site:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/missyusa.com
So it is not all that large. They have had a women only policy and focus on Koreans in the US - it is pretty active and is has a political impact:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2013/05/390_1357...
i) is it legal to exclude people based on gender?
ii) depressing that a women-only social network is needed. We've had online communities for over forty years so it's kind of disturbing that they all suck so much.
iii) trolls are trolls and it's not just men making threats of sexual violence. Women do it too. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25886026 (the tweets were so extreme that the BBC has to filter them, so it's hard to get the tone of the tweets.). Still, this should stop "boobs or gtfo".
> is it legal to exclude people based on gender?
In Australia it's against the law, but the courts can make exceptions if you convince them that what you're doing serves the public interest. Things like gay bars and women's spaces do so routinely.
Then there would be no general purpose discussions like there are on facebook, only discussions specific to the group that is allowed access. If you only let white people on a web site, it is going to become about white supremacy. If you only let women on a website, it is going to be about womens issues, etc.
Correction: if you only let white people on a web site, then the members on that site will discuss anything they want to discuss (which certainly includes many many more topics aside from white supremacy), but the discussion will take place from the perspective of white culture and white values. There will be a greater chance of deeming other cultures irrelevant to the discussion or (most commonly) simply forgetting that these other cultures don't exist.
With that in mind, you have a logical hole in your statement "If you only let women on a website, it is going to be about womens issues, etc". Women.com will be about women's issues because it is currently being marketed to the general public as a place for women to discuss women's issues. It will not be about women's issues solely because women are allowed on the site. Women who aren't interested in what other women think about women's issues won't find this site very interesting. In general, women will discuss what they want to, where they want.
What if women weren't allowed in the Freemasons?
Mumsnet? Pinterest? There are already women-only social networks, but as far as I know, no men-only.
There's a difference between segregation when you subscribe to a website and shared interests. I know males on pinterest.