TechCrunch gets a female writer. Finally!

I read TechCrunch everyday because it is informative and provides great value. But, one of my personal beefs about the TechCrunch network of blogs, since I have been reading them, is that there are no female writers or editors. If there have been women writing in the TC network in the history of those blogs, please feel free to correct me. But as far as I know, there haven't been any women doing write ups on the web 2.0 startups at TC.

However, that has changed. Marshall Kirkpatrick has moved onto greener pastures, and Natali Del Conte replaces him. Natali was a writer at PC Magazine, and a contributor to John Dvorak's Cranky Geeks show. She started posting today, and her writing is straight forward and personable. I look forward to reading more of her write-ups, and I am excited to get the female vibe on a topic that is dominated by male energy.

So, why is having women writers on TechCrunch such a big deal to me? It's not about diversity. It's about prosperity. I have never been a believer in the need to diversify just for the sake of diversifying. For me, there has to be a benefit to the choices you make, and in the case of creating diversity in your workplace, the best reason to me is for the sake of prosperity. We are in business to make money and to contribute to the betterment of the world. Putting people on your team from different backgrounds, who look at the world differently, and who think differently from each other gives you greater opportunity to grow, expand, and learn.

When you are thinking of ways to bullet proof your plans, what better than to have people, who look at and care about different things, find all your weak spots. When you are thinking of ways to expand your market share, and create more users and customers, having a cast of diverse thinkers and creators helps you come up with ideas and solutions that you may never have thought of.

Men and women view the world from different lenses. We focus on and care about different things. One view is not better than the other, they are just different, and that's okay. In the example of technology sites, there is a strong focus on speeds, feeds, and size. For many readers, that is fabulous information. For some readers, they could care less about size. They want to know how this piece of technology is going to help them live their best life. ie. How will it help me make more friends? How will it make me become financially independent? How will it help me make my business more profitable? How can it help me lose weight?

Most tech sites have readership's of about 75% or more male. Adding more female writers to the staff is prosperous because women can speak better to other women, and thus bring more readers and more traffic, period.  Female writers understand what issues and topics are of high interest to women, so they are better at writing about a product or service with a female user in mind. An iPod is an iPod, but to one group they may care more about the guts and sizes, and to another group they care more about style, service, and ease.

Right now going to the "big" places like CNET or Engadget for female consumers is not highly enjoyable, and it isn't because women don't have an interest in tech. Women buy 53% of all consumer electronics. It's just that these places don't speak our language. It doesn't feel welcoming to us. We don't feel like the site "gets" what I care about, so we stay away. For places like TechCrunch who focus on the business of Web 2.0 startups, which is dominated by men, adding a female perspective adds to the interestingness and well-roundedness of the place. Again, there has to be talent behind the "voice", regardless of gender, but if we make that a given, then how can you not help but become more profitable and more helpful to others?