04.26.10, 6:00 PM ET
"The world's gone social. And women are more social than men." --Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Facebook, the largest social networking tool in the world, is dominated by women.
According to BrianSolis.com and
Where Do Women Social Network? Top 10 Sites
Women are the majority of users on many of the biggest social networking sites, including Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and Flickr. Men, meanwhile, are most active on sites like Digg, YouTube and LinkedIn, which are more content-oriented and promotional than discussion-based.
However, women don't just visit different sites from men, they use social media differently than men. Experts believe the difference between how men and women operate online mirror their motivations offline. While women often use online social networking tools to make connections and share items from their personal lives, men use them as means to gather information and increase their status.
"We're women--we like to talk about things. Women use social media as a way to connect," says Jodi Kahn, the head of iVillage. A recent joint study from BlogHer and iVillage supports her theory, reporting that three-quarters of women use online communities to stay up to date with friends and family, and 68% use them to "connect with others like me."
On message boards and forums, Kahn says that both sexes seek information and advice, but women tend to get more personal. She says women want to learn about real people experiencing similar conflicts. "Women are online solving real-life issues. If I'm a mom who is about to start potty training, it's important to me to hear how other real moms are doing it," says Kahn.
Men, on the other hand, are researchers and social climbers. Professor of social media marketing at UC Berkeley, Lorrie Thomas, says men use social media as an "interactive Rolodex," storing contact information for future use.
Sherry Perlmutter Bowen, a gender and communication professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, says she's seeing men use social media to gather information and boost their influence. "I see males espousing their wisdom on social media sites and using social media to sell, to compete, to 'climb the ladder,'" she says.
According to Bowen, these gender differences are rooted in communication styles learned since birth. "Girls and boys are often raised in two distinct cultures where they learn different rules and norms for behavior and talk: Girls learn to build relationships by sharing social information. Boys learn to compare and compete with others, always striving for more success."
Psychologist Leslie Sokol, author of self-help book Think Confident, Be Confident, believes virtual communication differences between men and women can be tracked back through history as evolutionary methods of survival. Throughout time, males have been in competition with each other, even in the animal kingdom, she says. "The sexiest bird with the brightest plumage and best territory got all the women." Because it was in their best interest not to show weaknesses or give away their strategies, men became more reserved as an adaptive method, she says.
Sokol believes that women, the gatherers and community builders, had to work as a team to survive. They needed to use each other as resources and adapted to be more supportive by sharing their plans, shortcomings and advice. Today, women are still more likely to be forthcoming and verbose than men, she says, a difference that is reflected online.
Diana Windley, 39, is a good example. The assistant vice president of marketing at Goldenwest Credit Union in Utah uses several networking sites mainly to keep up with friends and read and discuss things she likes, rather than using it for business or promotional purposes. She also blogs about her life as career mom. Everyday she signs into Facebook to reconnect with old friends from high school and college and to build new relationships with neighbors and extended family. On Twitter she aims to make connections with people who aren't in her immediate circle but share similar interests in career, parenting and religion.
On the other hand, Allen Chen, 31, a communications assistant at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, uses networking sites as mediums to discuss ideas rather than share personal information. He logs onto Facebook several times a day to post interesting articles, which solicit responses from his 175 friends. He also uses Twitter to keep up on current events by following news outlets and "strangers" who share common interests in sports and technology.
Elisa Camahort Page, cofounder and chief operating officer of BlogHer, believes men leverage social media for broadcasting their ideas and skills vs. women who find connections with others by sharing the ups and downs of their daily lives.
Men are more active blog participants, she explains. They are more likely to read, write and post comments to blogs. Surprisingly, both men and women report that their most common blog topic is "my life," she says. However, the second most popular topic for men is business and career, and food and fashion are tied in second place for women.
Men are also more active users of YouTube, with about 20% more men visiting the video-sharing site per week, according to the BlogHer-iVillage study. Camahort Page believes men prefer the site because it is more passive. "[YouTube] is about finding, consuming and passing along content, but it's not about conversation."
Not surprisingly, the different ways men and women approach social media are beginning to be noticed and exploited by advertisers. Scott Staab, group creative director of marketing agency T3, whose clients include JCPenney and
Staab says that a woman who advocates for a brand online is more likely to influence her friends. "Some of our clients skew highly female, and we are going into social gaming because it's an area that we know women spend more time." Companies would be smart to create their own games to draw in users, Staab says, because "it doesn't have to be about pushing product all the time. It's about brand engagement."
According to Kelly O'Neill, director of product marketing at e-commerce software firm
Patty Kennedy, founder of communications firm Kennedy Spencer, uses her knowledge of gendered behavior on social networking sites to better target men and women for her clients, which include
Says Facebook's Sandberg, "If you reach women [online], they will tell their friends." What may be an evolutionary fact turns out to be a marketer's dream.
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