Digital Women -25 Factoids to Consider...

Given the recent BlogHer conference, I found it interesting how little we know about the gender divide digitally. I came across a number of stats that suggest the tide is large, different and turning:

- depending on the source, 71-73% of women (representing 51-53% of the population) go online - many believe in North America they have surpassed men on this count (MORI, USC, Arbitron, Comscore) - the incidence levels are up 12 percentage points since 2000

- 33% of all women in the U.S. aged 18 to 75 participate in the blogosphere at least once a week (Compass Partners)

- 15 million women write blogs -  of online women, 53% read blogs, 37% post comments to blogs and 28% write or update blogs  (Compass Partners)

- 14% of men and 11% of women blog (Pew Internet)

- 46% of women-authored blogs are political or issue-driven

- BlogHer now has 26,000 members and 15,000 female-authored blogs listed in their directory (BlogHer)

- Women, young women in particular, are much more active on social networks (Rapleaf)
    - they tend to be more relationship and less transactional driven
    - the dollars spent to acquire a female user goes much further
       Facebook/My Space - 63% female
        LinkedIn    - 36% female
        Plaxo - 62% female
        hi-5 - 60% female

- Reasons why women blog (Compass Partners)
    - 65% for fun
    - 60% self-expression
    - 46% to get info
    - 41% to stay up to date
    - 40% connect with others
    - 39% keep a diary
    - 28% to participate in the blogosphere

- In lieu of visiting their favourite blogs, hardcore digital women would give up: (Compass Partners)
    - Alcohol - 53%
    - Newspaper/magazines - 43%
    - iPod - 42%
    - Chocolate - 20%

- 37% of women need their cell phone within reach 24 hours/day

- 70% of ringtones that are purchased are from women

- the fourth most interesting category of blogs are women's blogs - up 35% in 2007

- women are much more likely to look for health info online

- when purchasing online, men stick to their mission, women expand their mission -women take three times more tangents than men while shopping online and 65% consider online shopping to be window shopping (vs. 46% for men) (Nielsen)

- the Internet is considered a women's third favourite leisure activity after sleep and family (Yahoo)

- 42% of online women visited a social network last month (vs. 41% of men) (SRG)

- when social networking, men use it as a podium and women use it as a tool for dialogue
        - averagely across the 6 big social networks - women have 81 friends and men 78 (but women's relationships in networks also tend to be deeper)

- 40% of gamers and 64% of online gamers are women (Nielsen)

- 1/2 of the women who visit blogs are influenced by them for their purchase decisions (Compass Partners)

- 15% of women stream TV shows from network TV sites (vs. 11% for men) (SRG)

- women have 83 word of mouth conversations every week and more pass along stuff of interest than general public (55% vs. 51%) and purchase is influenced by WOM (53% vs. 49%) (Keller Fay)

- 2/3rds of men are comfortable showing creative work online and only 1/3rd of women are similarly comfortable (Northwestern)

- working women spend 9 hours on work-related and 1.5 hours on non-work related sites at work each week -slightly below men on both counts (Harris Interactive)

- as a sober reminder, women were more numerous than men online only in two countries (US and the UK)

And given my testosterone, couldn't leave this piece of trivia out - 42% of NASCAR fans and 33% of NFL fans and 28% of Major League Baseball are women.