ComScore: Women Use Interactive Local Media Differently

We know certain Web phenomena 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 is that women far outpace men for the conversational features: social networking, instant messaging and e-mail. Worldwide, the difference is 16.3 percent to 11.7 percent for social networking; 11.3 percent to 10.4 percent for instant messaging; and 7.7 percent to 6.8 percent for e-mail. Men, however, slightly outpace women in their use of directories/resources: 2.4 percent to 2.2 percent.

All this plays out in the the different ways 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 percent) tend to post tweets than women (28 percent). Women tend to use Twitter to find deals and promotions. They also use it as more a conversation medium and to follow celebrities.