Women Take Centre Stage In Social Networking

Women around the world spend almost a third more time on social networking sites than men do.

This is despite the fact that women account for 47.9% of total unique visitors to social networking sites, according to survey of women’s online usage undertaken by comScore.

“Although women number less than half of the number of individuals who use, for example, Facebook and Twitter, they account for nearly 57% of the total minutes spent on social networking sites,” says Robyn Farrell, managing director of 1st for Women Insurance.

Farrell says that this study showed that women throughout the world demonstrate strong engagement with social sites, an observation backed up by the finding that women spend 5.5 hours per month on such sites, compared to the four hours that men devote to similar websites.

Other findings from the report

Women average 25 hours per month online, which is 8% more than the time spent on the Internet by men. This is despite men being in the majority across the global Internet.

Globally, women spend 20% more time on retail sites overall than men. Comparison shopping and apparel sites were visited by the highest percentage of women - 24.8% and 18.7%, respectively.

Some of the largest overall differences in reach between the sexes were observed on health Websites.

In most countries women spend far less time watching online videos than men. However, women spend a much higher proportion of their time online watching videos on YouTube.

“The study’s authors note that the increase over the past year shows the growing importance of social networking to women’s online experience; a trend that has important implications for social networking sites in terms of content as well as the user experience,” notes Farrell.

Surprising statistics

The research found that women 45 years and older are driving the greatest proportion of growth for social networking sites, in terms of both visitation and time spent.

Users aged 15-24 were shown to have the highest reach and the heaviest usage, while older women have similar reach and usage as the women aged 25-34 and 35-44 years.

All groups were found to spend a significant amount of their total online time on these sites.

Twitter has proved to be popular with both genders, although women and men use Twitter for different types of activities.

“The comScore survey found that men are far more likely to post their own Tweets than women; however, a larger percentage of female Twitter users say they use the site to find deals and promotions,” says Farrell.

“Women are also more likely to use the service as a conversation medium and to follow celebrities,” she says.

If there was any doubt among trend watchers about the female presence on the Web, this must surely be a thing of the past.