Trying to tap the online money flow of women ages 25-54, Yahoo has launched Shine in blog format. Call it the “dumbing down” of blogging. In other words, targeting blogging to the lowest common denominator by assuming that adult women are primarily interested in stroller envy articles and buying footwear in response to a co-worker’s inappropriate behavior.

I can’t imagine any attorney, or responsible workplace supervisor for that matter, giving out that type of advice for the latter example.  Frankly, it isn’t liberating — it’s degrading.

To be sure, I don’t expect everyone to have the knowledge or interests of a Lorelle VanFossen writing about Woopra’s new blog statistics program or a Jackie Lange writing about real estate investing. But is it too much to ask for Shine to actually assume its target market has an IQ above 100 and wants substance instead of stereotyped fluff?

What do you think?

About the Author

With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 14 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of Internet Marketing Legal Secrets Revealed. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.