Gender gap in social media. More women involved in Web2.0
June 5, 2008 by Colleen Coplick
Filed under Social Media
According to a recent Rapleaf Study, both men and women use social 
networking sites in massive numbers, but it’s the women who are holding down the fort.
I can’t say that I’m surprised, really. Sure, there’s several guys I’m “friends” with or “talk to” on Twitter for example, which really is my main socnet, there’s more conversations with women. I think that more of my friends on Facebook are women too.
Also, as Rapleaf points out in an article in Business Week, women act differently online, just as we do in real life. Social media is just that – it’s about being social. Typically, men are the early adopters of new technologies but where social networks and social media is concerned, women come out on top.
Part of the reason for this is because married men generally don’t even join the social networks – they’ve got lots of things competing for their attention. Where younger men are concerned, there is intense competition for their attention, especially from video games like World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto. Guys don’t spend a lot of time in the casual gaming world.
Women on the other hand, are big into casual gaming, and because most social networks are essentially big casual game networks, it stands to reason we’d be the ones all over them.
Just like in person, women’s online behaviour is less purely networking or transactional (which is what most men’s online behaviour is) and more relationship-driven. We spend more time on social networks, sharing pictures, communicating with friends and making new friends. Because of this kind of use, and the fact that we end up encouraging our friends to join our networks, a dollar spent marketing a social network to a female user goes further than one spent to capture a male user.
Take a look at your own networks… do you see a gender divide?
(image credit Newscom)
Thanks for the post. I was not aware about the gender gap. But what you say about the transactional behavior of male, yes, is true. I myself behave like that. But that is how i am! However, i have a complaint about relationship driven behavior of females. Most of you are not that much driven. Those are, please, control yourself. You are taking it too seriously.
Interesting study, although, like you said, not surprising. Web 2.0 is generally relationship-driven, and that’s what most women are!
hmmm. according to forrester’s research for groundswell, men are more active than women. Partly I would imaging because things like WoW are really just as much social networks as the ones rapleaf looked at, if not more so.
from what I can see, the rapleaf study was extremely limited in scope. what’s more interesting to me is the ways that men and women use socnets differently, particularly at different ages.