We know that certain Web phenomenon are women driven. Groupon and DailyCandy, for instance, are heavily dominated by women; Facebook to a lesser degree. Gilt Groupe, the high end “flash sales” fashion site, is more of a women’s thing (although a surprising number of men also use it). Local community news and school information is something else that has traditionally been dominated by women (especially mothers, who take a statistically greater interest than fathers.)
Now ComScore has done a comprehensive study of the differences between Women and Men on the Web. Among the key findings. Women far outpace men for the conversational features. Social Networking, Instant Messaging and email.Worldwide, the difference is 16.3% to 11.7% for social networking; 11.3% to 10.4% for Instant Messaging; and 7.7% to 6.8% for email. Men, however, slightly outpace women in their use of directories/resources: 2.4% to 2.2%.
All this plays out in the the different ways that the genders use Twitter, which I would have thought would be dominated by tech-oriented men since it is a “technology.” But ComScore points out that overall usage is about equal. What men and women do there, however, greatly differs. A higher percentage of Men (38%) tend to post tweets than Women (28%). Women tend to use Twitter to find deals and promotions. They also use it as more a conversation medium and to follow celebrities.
This makes me wonder what my wife does online compared to myself…