Men vs. Women in Social Media

In surfing through the web on my routine social media update, I stumbled upon a study done by www.royal.pingdom.com that brought up an interesting question, “What is the ratio of males to females participating in online social networks?” When I initially saw the title of this study I thought, “Of course, it’s got to be females” which was a correct assumption, but what I found equally as intriguing were the individual site’s results.

The survey conducted through data from Google Ad Planner(US Data Only), tracked 19 of the most popular social networking site’s demographic behavior. The study showed that 16 of the 19 sites were female dominated in terms of number of users. Sites tested in the survey included popular social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, as well as social new sites like Digg, Slashdot and Reddit.

An interesting point taken from these results was that the only 3 male dominated sites were social news sites where users post and rate news threads based on their likings. Slashdot, Reddit and Digg attracted a male user group of 82%, 66% and 59% respectively. This says something about the ways in which males and females utilize social media. An appropriate quote I found from professor Russell-Bennet of Queensland University of Technology states, “It seemed women wanted to express themselves, while men enjoyed the thrill of social competition.” This proves to be true with men taking on a more competitive role in sites that involve ranking and user scores, where more females want to interact and connect with others.

Although these findings don’t prove to be particularly surprising, I found them quite informative and insightful in to the world of social media marketing. Be sure to take these findings in to consideration when developing a marketing strategy targeted towards one gender! What are your thoughts and opinions on this?

-Ben Crutchley, Manager of Client Services