Top ten female website entrepreneurs

On 8th March every year, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. These range from political rallies or business conferences to government activities and networking events and even women's craft markets, theatric performances and fashion parades. Since the 1900s, women have come a long way. In our own celebration of women's achievements worldwide, we've picked (in no particular order) our top ten female website entrepreneurs - women who have made their mark online in one way or another and inspired us all.

Martha Lane-Fox. An icon of the 90s UK internet boom, Lane-Fox co-founded Lastminute.com with Brent Hoberman in 1998 and floated it at the peak of the dot-com bubble. She went onto found LuckyVoice.com, the karaoke bar chain and online karaoke site and is the government's Digital Champion in the Race Online 2012 campaign, which seeks to help people, in particular the elderly, get online.

Natalie Massanet. The former Vanity Fair journalist started Net-a-Porter.com after readers repeatedly emailed asking where they could purchase items they had seen in the magazine. Potential investors initially turned her away, insisting that women would never buy online. The naysayers soon had to eat their words as the company doubled its turnover annually and added 3,000 new customers each month. When Net-a-Porter was bought by the Richemont Group last year, Massanet is said to have made around £50 million. She recently launched MrPorter.com, offering designer fashion for men.

Rachel Whetstone. Former olitical Secretary to former Conservative party leader, Michael Howard, Whetstone joined search-engine company, Google.com as European Head of Communications in 2005 and in 2008 moved to the US to take the role of Vice-President of Communications and Public Affairs.

Arianna Huffington. Founded The Huffington Post (thehuffingtonpost.com), a commentary and alternative news and blogging site, in 2005. In 2009, Huffington was named as one of Forbes' Most Influential Women in Media. On 7th February 2011, AOL announced that it would acquire The Huffington Post for $315 million and make Huffington President and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which includes AOL properties such as Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone and others.

Caterina Fake. Co-founder of Flickr.com, the photo sharing service, which was sold to Yahoo.com in 2005 for approximately $30 million, Fake has won numerous awards, as well as being named one of the Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People (2006). In 2009, she co-founded Hunch.com, a site aims to build a ‘taste graph' of the internet, mapping every user on the internet to every entity and their affinity to that entity.

Sara Murray. A British entrepreneur and businesswoman, Murray founded a price-comparison service called Inspop, which became Confused.com after she sold it to Admiral Group in 2001. She went onto develop the buddi (buddi.co.uk), a miniaturised tracking device for vulnerable people and young children. She is also a member of the British government's Technology Strategy Board and Seedcamp - an organisation which helps to jumpstart entrepreneurs in the UK and Europe.

Heather Armstrong. An American blogger and founder of Dooce.com, Armstrong has written extensively about her struggles with depression as well as her pregnancies, parenthood, skin cancer and her experiences with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In 2009, she launched an interactive section on her website as a way of engaging her rapt audience. The same year, she was named one of Forbes' Most Influential Women in Media. She has also received multiple nominations and awards from The Weblog Awards (Bloggies), proving that there's more muscle in blogging than you might at first think.

Meg Hourihan. Co-founded Pyra Labs, which in turn created Blogger.com, one of the earliest personal publishing applications. Blogger.com revolutionised the industry and made ‘blog' a globally recognised word. In 2003 it was bought by Google. Hourihan has gone on to write and speak widely about weblogging. She also co-authored a book called We Blog.

Lisa Stone. Former executive producer and Editor in Chief for Women.com, Stone co-founded BlogHer.com as a way of connecting female bloggers and allowing them to be found online. A leading expert on developing successful online communities and interactive programming for women, Stone hosts the world's largest conference for women in social media. BlogHer receives more than 23 million unique visitors per month.

Eileen Gittins. Founded Blurb Books (blurb.com), a self-publishing book startup that went from generating $1 million in revenue to $45 million in 2009 and ships more than 1.2 million books to more than 60 countries annually. Prior to setting up Blurb, Gittins set up a number of web companies, including Personify, an ecommerce data mining and analytics company, and Verb, a context-based search engine company.

Emily Jenkinson

8th March 2011