Women Outnumber Men in Social Networks

It's not a surprise that social networks compose a big part of the lives of Internet users. Interestingly, according a new study by Rapleaf, an online reputation company, most major social networks are composed of women by a good margin. Using Facebook as an example, within the 18-24 age group who use it,1,685,029 were women versus 977,753 men. Within the same age demographic, MySpace has 7,091,214 women and 5,226,778 men. That's a 26 percent difference right there. The only major social networking site that had more male membership is LinkedIn--a business-oriented networking site. The stereotypes still hold true.

For commerce sites looking to expand within the realm of the social web, bear in mind that you're likely to attract more female customers than male customers--depending on what goods you sell of course. Knowing which sites have more men or women can help target your marketing more effectively. For instance, if you sell perfume, patronizing MySpace or any of these female-dominated networking sites may garner you more click-throughs, leads, and sales.

Bear in mind that the data doesn't filter spam or inactive accounts. Even so, just eyeballing the data gives us a general idea that women dominate the social media marketplace. What would be valuable to know is a user's motivation for using Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Hi5 or whatever site they're using and compare the differences between men and women. That way we can have a good idea of the behaviorial aspects between the two sexes. And marketers can plan their "attack" accordingly.