Study: Women Outnumber Men on Most Social Networks
Written by Richard MacManus / July 29, 2008 11:52 PM
/ 18 Comments
Online reputation company Rapleaf has released a new study of 49.3 million people, revealing gender and age data about social network users. On most of the main social networks - including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 - women outnumber men by a considerable amount. On Facebook, the 18-24 age group is largest, with 1,685,029 women in that age group compared to 977,753 men. In MySpace, the same age group dominates, with 7,091,214 women and 5,226,788 men.
The only social networks studied that didn't have more women than men in the 18-24 year old group were venerable old LinkedIn (where incidentally the 25-34 age group was tops) and a site called Perfspot.
Other highlights:
- Women ages 14-24 dominate activity on social networks and have more friends than men of the same ages.
- Men ages 35+ are more active and have more friends than women of the same ages.
- The average social network user has 2-25 friends.
- There are a disproportionately high number of 69 year olds across various social networks. (my guess is that it's the most popular 'fake age')
Rapleaf states that it "analyzed people who are on at least one social network and in which there exists age information on these individuals." The study was done 10 June '08 and approx 90% of the 49m respondents were from the US. Here is the full data, courtesy of Rapleaf:
Gender and Age Analysis of Social Networking Users: Social Network Sites
| Social Network |
Gender | Age Groups | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14-17 | 18-24 | 25-34 | 35-44 | 45-54 | 55-64 | 65+ | ||
| Bebo | Women | 1,207,833 | 1,373,653 | 735,666 | 197,297 | 84,106 | 33,693 | 12,950 |
| Men | 569,510 | 802,474 | 488,944 | 162,689 | 63,119 | 27,058 | 10,775 | |
| Unspecified | 15,532 | 15,865 | 3,977 | 1,197 | 406 | 101 | 22 | |
| Blackplanet | Women | 120,981 | 346,629 | 164,383 | 47,500 | 13,660 | 3,361 | 1,814 |
| Men | 55,856 | 212,479 | 140,077 | 52,483 | 16,099 | 4,309 | 1,781 | |
| Unspecified | 3,114 | 9,027 | 4,870 | 2,152 | 843 | 240 | 29 | |
| Classmates | Women | 142,757 | 599,895 | 724,253 | 240,863 | 117,584 | 41,578 | 10,152 |
| Men | 62,885 | 278,908 | 435,742 | 211,079 | 100,527 | 41,874 | 12,527 | |
| Unspecified | 2,532 | 9,355 | 9,363 | 5,346 | 2,811 | 1,323 | 407 | |
| Women | 784,214 | 1,685,029 | 767,619 | 184,057 | 72,743 | 21,441 | 10,270 | |
| Men | 357,017 | 977,753 | 609,655 | 177,662 | 62,033 | 22,024 | 8,545 | |
| Unspecified | 29,495 | 82,958 | 47,769 | 13,403 | 4,595 | 1,549 | 405 | |
| Flickr | Women | 87,720 | 303,941 | 363,220 | 139,090 | 60,707 | 19,871 | 5,113 |
| Men | 44,170 | 235,015 | 398,061 | 205,631 | 89,587 | 33,994 | 8,998 | |
| Unspecified | 5,163 | 23,806 | 25,753 | 10,982 | 4,825 | 1,926 | 524 | |
| Flixster | Women | 2,221,835 | 3,258,823 | 1,841,543 | 658,189 | 297,477 | 93,020 | 27,204 |
| Men | 1,146,532 | 2,583,675 | 1,840,241 | 671,368 | 271,350 | 90,236 | 26,387 | |
| Unspecified | 439,005 | 936,040 | 728,514 | 309,983 | 132,917 | 56,386 | 16,674 | |
| Friendster | Women | 341,386 | 1,165,896 | 890,380 | 210,887 | 61,603 | 18,889 | 8,364 |
| Men | 225,834 | 975,965 | 904,600 | 279,728 | 85,178 | 27,573 | 11,975 | |
| Unspecified | 5,856 | 21,879 | 19,569 | 3,998 | 597 | 141 | 82 | |
| Hi5 | Women | 1,382,273 | 3,078,898 | 1,475,824 | 412,150 | 175,018 | 52,250 | 16,800 |
| Men | 724,153 | 2,610,316 | 1,927,297 | 612,917 | 231,727 | 76,374 | 22,358 | |
| Unspecified | 374,960 | 833,937 | 453,346 | 143,102 | 55,487 | 16,872 | 3,556 | |
| Women | 3,697 | 39,594 | 178,550 | 69,197 | 24,368 | 7,726 | 1,355 | |
| Men | 4,618 | 42,642 | 222,431 | 124,759 | 45,310 | 16,083 | 3,379 | |
| Unspecified | 610 | 7,905 | 27,858 | 13,456 | 5,264 | 2,005 | 402 | |
| Multiply | Women | 115,117 | 352,590 | 194,957 | 51,304 | 19,488 | 5,829 | 2,270 |
| Men | 55,054 | 261,803 | 194,818 | 63,000 | 25,247 | 8,846 | 3,042 | |
| Unspecified | 184 | 536 | 389 | 112 | 44 | 17 | 0 | |
| Myspace | Women | 5,158,453 | 7,091,214 | 3,800,542 | 1,252,287 | 542,694 | 167,087 | 71,531 |
| Men | 3,365,442 | 5,226,788 | 3,238,471 | 1,209,510 | 475,566 | 167,101 | 66,852 | |
| Unspecified | 3,147 | 4,726 | 2,540 | 1,137 | 548 | 251 | 67 | |
| MyYearbook | Women | 637,510 | 578,018 | 239,646 | 91,832 | 37,531 | 10,871 | 5,345 |
| Men | 280,131 | 292,263 | 127,999 | 55,766 | 23,582 | 7,503 | 3,145 | |
| Unspecified | 20,524 | 20,980 | 9,300 | 4,507 | 1,837 | 729 | 232 | |
| Perfspot | Women | 84,840 | 158,003 | 91,200 | 31,375 | 14,192 | 4,033 | 1,077 |
| Men | 66,643 | 317,958 | 260,641 | 86,707 | 29,974 | 9,494 | 2,790 | |
| Unspecified | 30 | 181 | 264 | 95 | 36 | 6 | 0 | |
| Tickle | Women | 743,111 | 1,491,975 | 887,369 | 318,578 | 151,490 | 44,742 | 12,876 |
| Men | 309,858 | 939,737 | 739,932 | 268,239 | 118,031 | 41,130 | 12,042 | |
| Unspecified | 70,562 | 177,297 | 100,108 | 34,037 | 14,204 | 5,048 | 1,235 | |
| ALL SOCIAL NETWORKS |
Women | 6,322,060 | 9,651,584 | 5,683,422 | 1,929,328 | 857,965 | 279,684 | 97,858 |
| Men | 4,050,429 | 7,546,654 | 5,543,729 | 2,113,597 | 873,135 | 323,251 | 108,731 | |
| Unspecified | 682,756 | 1,456,780 | 1,045,381 | 428,357 | 181,913 | 72,196 | 20,240 | |
Gender and Age Analysis of Social Networking Users: Number of Friends
| Number of Friends |
Gender | Age Groups | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14-17 | 18-24 | 25-34 | 35-44 | 45-54 | 55-64 | 65+ | ||
| Only 1 | Women | 494,290 | 1,082,078 | 774,348 | 332,421 | 187,938 | 69,763 | 17,661 |
| Men | 299,845 | 860,299 | 842,264 | 409,445 | 204,222 | 84,208 | 23,848 | |
| Unspecified | 163,006 | 376,327 | 371,830 | 185,357 | 89,406 | 39,707 | 11,944 | |
| 2-25 | Women | 1,479,294 | 2,480,716 | 1,712,634 | 717,988 | 341,775 | 105,332 | 25,928 |
| Men | 840,014 | 2,171,495 | 1,919,974 | 822,654 | 338,124 | 110,903 | 29,058 | |
| Unspecified | 294,199 | 606,504 | 441,939 | 174,253 | 66,304 | 23,410 | 5,837 | |
| 26-50 | Women | 270,902 | 637,285 | 412,133 | 140,068 | 47,173 | 9,074 | 3,261 |
| Men | 184,205 | 577,287 | 410,987 | 120,648 | 33,534 | 8,889 | 3,632 | |
| Unspecified | 27,318 | 81,351 | 42,756 | 9,768 | 2,804 | 653 | 134 | |
| 51-100 | Women | 299,873 | 818,744 | 453,323 | 105,268 | 27,640 | 5,518 | 3,509 |
| Men | 239,245 | 720,874 | 409,077 | 88,815 | 21,004 | 5,826 | 3,871 | |
| Unspecified | 24,307 | 74,446 | 35,330 | 5,584 | 1,359 | 260 | 72 | |
| 101-500 | Women | 750,850 | 1,656,855 | 505,277 | 81,626 | 22,222 | 7,517 | 9,867 |
| Men | 573,135 | 1,447,347 | 525,489 | 93,797 | 22,862 | 8,063 | 9,089 | |
| Unspecified | 90,430 | 176,024 | 45,515 | 4,453 | 871 | 189 | 104 | |
| 501-1,000 | Women | 90,868 | 151,497 | 28,281 | 6,187 | 2,159 | 921 | |
| Men | 58,242 | 142,456 | 45,275 | 11,604 | 3,242 | 1,113 | 1,345 | |
| Unspecified | 22,511 | 24,417 | 2,611 | 267 | 65 | 14 | 22 | |
| 1,001-10,000 | Women | 26,950 | 42,770 | 11,855 | 3,355 | 1,111 | 399 | 709 |
| Men | 20,824 | 35,819 | 21,446 | 7,558 | 2,202 | 623 | 765 | |
| Unspecified | 5,276 | 12,981 | 2,879 | 1,217 | 352 | 147 | 613 | |
| 10,000+ | Women | 148 | 505 | 328 | 73 | 24 | 5 | 14 |
| Men | 90 | 484 | 628 | 249 | 66 | 26 | 23 | |
| Unspecified | 11 | 17 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| At Least 1 Friend |
Women | 3,386,077 | 6,827,175 | 3,885,996 | 1,383,558 | 628,907 | 198,125 | 61,800 |
| Men | 2,194,686 | 5,919,758 | 4,153,066 | 1,546,963 | 622,988 | 219,002 | 70,843 | |
| Unspecified | 621,771 | 1,339,069 | 939,981 | 379,682 | 160,809 | 64,233 | 18,113 | |
You can also download the full dataset as a spreadsheet here.
Comments
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Do those figures indicate, nearly 50 million users and 35 million have at least 1 friend. That leaves 15 million accounts with no friends.
30% of social network users arn`t sociable!
Women are the future of mankind !
It is funny, because the only networks where male dominates is "linkedin".
Hey guys, there is a life outiside business!
Do we know how many of these women are fake? Because I think some of them are!
Great study that "sort-of" confirms what I've always felt -that social networks were created by geeks to attract girls (not unlike a cool science project in high school). Guys then show up (because the women are there) but ultimately get bored and leave because of all the socializing.
Social Networks = shopping with your girlfriend AND her girlfriend
Social Networks = Disco (which still sucks)
Women like to dance... most men don't but because they like women so they teach themselves a few moves...
Great take on the study. I also wanted to point out that at least the crazy habits of technology community are not really mainstream - the number of people who have over 1,000 friends on social networks is not that high at all and the majority of people that only have 2-25 friends must actually be connected to these friends in real life. So it kind of proves that social networking still serves its initial purpose of connecting friends.
As a chatroom user, women indeed dominate, all of the chatrooms I've been. Sites such as wireclub.com has a easy "create chatrooms" feature and experience tells me that male creators don't get much visitors.
Back to topic, I've also have this idea that females tend to have more male "friends" or how the invite button describes it.
Social Networks just have the satisfaction of males and females saying "hey, I've got 'insert girl name', how good am I? " or "check this guy out, he's got a bunch of girl friends, he must be some guy". *cough*
A few comments on this study. If you link back to the actual page on the study at RapLeaf, you'll see there is very little data given on the methodology of the survey. They don't tell you how they acquired the data, this is very important as if they simply queried the social networks by searching their account data the results will be heavily biased toward women because many of these social networks are immediate targets of bot account creators.
Myspace was particularly susceptible to this prior to their implementation of Captch challanges between various actions on the site (sending emails etc.) even after this there are still bots with human assistance. It appears individuals are creating multiple fake female accounts and using them to mine male users for the purpose of directing them to outside sites or to get their private email data. Unlike the completely automated bots of 10 years ago these are real people that perform the functions that the bots could not normally do. I suspect that a large chunk of the female numbers on these social networks represent bots. It would be interesting to see a study done that tries to filter for automated accounts, I suspect that the results would reveal a larger percentage of males on all the sites than females.
Ahh the internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents.
I figured that the females especially the younger ones outnumbered the males. Nice post, that's a ton of information.
What's interesting here for me is not so much the stats themselves, but the societal implications of the data.
If social networks are evolving the ways in which we communicate, and social networks are dominated by women, then the communications of our society are going to be significantly altered by the strong female influence.
Broadcast communications are founded on traditionally male communication principles: reach, authority, fact-seeking. Social networks are founded upon female communcation principles: collaboration, participation and sharing. As social networks continue to gain traction, we are going to see a cultural shift that will impact decision-making and leadership structures.
I will blog about this at some point in the future.
woah really? what a magical study. considering that i can come to that conclusion based on 3 simple parameters:
1.- 60% of the world population are women
2.- the most engaging new group of internet users are stay at home moms (this is known since 2005)
3.- Women like to socialize more than men
= women dominate in terms of engagement social networking and blogging.
i thought that was common knowledge by now.
Women outnumber men on social network because most of the women today is passionate about internet chatting and always looking for a groups that they can interact and communicate well.
one third without friend, that's surprising as all these services are a bit boring without a community
Women vs. Men? Whatever. The statistic I find most intriguing is the nearly 9,000 LinkedIn users who are under 18! Who are these kids, and how can I get them to influence my little sister?
so if men are more powerful in the world, what does that say about social networks?
well,before i forget ineed to know how i get to the english version form.
This does not tell us much new, as said in above comments.
If men are more powerful in the world, this tells us that social networks are more frequently used by powerless people :-)
Insightful visualization of Rapleaf's data at http://www.mininglabs.com/2008/08/05/digging-through-rapleaf%E2%80%99s-study-on-gender-and-age-in-social-networks/