"Yahoo For Men" company founder sees men generally drawn to "lowest common denominator" concepts

Submitted by Mastodon on Fri, 2014-10-10 00:27

Article here. Excerpt:

'I don’t feel it’s an overreach to say we’re building the Yahoo for men. When I was at Yahoo, I discovered that the big-scale male demographic sites, for the most part, were not befitting of major premium brands because men tend to gravitate to the lowest common denominator when it comes to concepts. So, looking at the media and content for women, there’s lots of high-quality premium safe content for brands to associate with. But for men, there’s a only handful at scale. That’s where we want to play.'

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Comments

Guess he thinks he's *special*, like the target male demographic he seeks to make $ off of. Well, no law vs. trying to turn a buck. And no law vs. being prejudiced vs. your own sex. But where he gets this idea that women readers are more likely to be interested in "superior" content than men... can't say. After all, the typical female reader of news sites like Yahoo! seems principally interested in celebrity news/gossip, clothing styles, an endless no. of ways to lose weight or exercise (or both), wedding planning, wedding dresses, baby care topics, checklists re rel'ps and of course, divorce issues. And then there's the many ways women are oppressed.

Compare these to things men read about and while there's a few substitutions (trade baby care topics and wedding stuff with sports news and cheerleader photos), and it's not much different, minus the feminist junk, of course.

Maybe he's trying to appeal to men who'd rather read business news and actual news. Great. Two things: 1. Been done already. It's called "The Wall Street Journal". 2. By trying to appeal to his target demo's sense of "higher-classedness" in terms of man-ness, I think he's barking up the wrong tree. At least for readers in the US, trying to use the "superior class" approach doesn't work well.

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2014-10-11 17:07