The Social Media Gender Gap

According to a Rapleaf study, while both sexes still use social networking sites in huge numbers, women are the ones holding down the fort

by Auren Hoffman

If Slide and RockYou, two of the fastest-growing Web businesses, are any barometer for the future, the Internet is going to look pink. In other words, the future of social media is going to be all about the women. So if you're going to create the next hot Web 2.0 site and you want it to go viral, you'll target women.

It's no shock that men and women act differently online, just as they do in everyday life. The Web is an extremely social medium, and Web 2.0 is all about being social. Traditionally, men are the early adopters of new technologies. But when it comes to social media, women are at the forefront. At Rapleaf we conducted a study of 13.2 million people and how they're using social media. While the trends indicate both sexes are using social media in huge numbers, our findings show that women far outpace the men.

As a result, with the next wave of innovation likely to target women more than men, this gender gap on social networks (and increasingly in all of social media) will only widen. Naturally, male adoption of social media will grow as well. It just won't keep pace with the expanding engagement among female users. Here's why.

A Dearth of Married Men

Among twentysomethings, women and men are just as likely to be members of social networks. Facebook, MySpace, and Flixster are extraordinarily popular. But we found that young women are much more active on these sites than young men. And men above 30—especially married men—aren't even joining social networks. With the notable exceptions of LinkedIn users and venture capitalists in the Bay Area "friending" everyone on Facebook, married men are not hanging out on social networks. Married women, however, are joining social networks in droves. In fact, women between ages 35 and 50 are the fastest-growing segment, especially on MySpace.

Why the disparity? Clearly, young men spend as much time (and often more) in front of a computer. And they have just as much free time, if not more. But there's intense competition for their attention, especially from video games, such as role-playing fantasy games, like World of Warcraft, and first-person action games, like Grand Theft Auto. And men who play casual games tend to like poker and other distractions that involve betting. Since most social networks ban gambling, men seek Web sites (most of them based offshore) that allow them to wager when they play.

Women, by contrast, are big on casual games, and most social networks—especially those dominated by third-party applications—are essentially big casual game networks. Young women also spend much more time decorating their social network profile pages and making slide shows. Popular sites such as Whateverlife.com facilitate this trend by offering and catering MySpace layouts to young women.

The Transactional Type

Naturally, young men understand they can't spend all their free time playing video games (though some practically do), as they still need to interact with the opposite sex occasionally. Sex, of course, has long been one of the strongest drivers of online usage. Not surprisingly, many men see social networks as a potential gateway to fill that desire. But once they get married, men see less value in social networks. Indeed, men generally tend to look at things in a more transactional way than women. That's why married men dominate LinkedIn, the most transactional mainstream social network.