Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Social networking and men.


A recent study found that on most social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace, women outnumber men. The authors speculated on why this might be. Another interesting article explores the tendencies men and women tend to exhibit when making friends online. This study looked at how men and women follow other users and reciprocate with users on Twitter--men are about twice as likely to follow other men than women, as it turns out. There is not just a gender gap with social networking, but a gap between married and unmarried men. Another interesting article is about what men actually do on social networking sites--if they do not seem as inclined to connect with others, how are they wasting as much time on Facebook as women? Apparently their top activity is looking at photos of women that are not in their network, followed by looking at photos of women who are. Women mostly look only at women in their network, therefore giving women the majority of photo views. When I first heard this, I found it hard to believe that men would spend time looking at women they don't know--until I found out that my brother actually met his current girlfriend by looking at photos of his friend's friends. Can any men vouch for any of these trends, or are your individual experiences completely different?

6 comments:

  1. It would be really interesting to use photo views of women in friends network as a measure of relationship satisfaction. The hypothesis would be, of men who are listed as married or in a relationship do we see evidence of increase in # of female Friend of Friend views prior to change in declared relationship status? That would be an interesting study!

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  2. Agh! Creepy! I refuse to believe that checking out the pictures of women not in their profile is really men's top activity on Facebook. Then again, I don't spend very much of my time on facebook looking at pictures. But still - weird.

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  3. I don't understand how you would look at other women pictures if they are not in your friends list or network? I guess if one of your friend has them as friends you could see their pictures! But its kind of weird when people add you as a friend because both of you have mutual friends... I think facebook is getting creepier each day!

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  4. That would be quite an interesting study, although I feel it would end up getting some men in trouble! I do not have a facebook; however, I have seen some of my guy friends look through photos of girls they are either friends with or friends of friends with.

    Often times, I have seen a male friend log on to facebook to ask his friends if a particular girl is "hot" or when referencing her in a story. I am not surprised that viewing female's photos is men's top activity on facebook; however, I would also be curious to see female's patterns of photo viewing.

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  5. Alyssa, the report only mentioned that women tend to look at photos of women they know overall--not so much the men in their networks. This led to women getting the most views on their photos. I don't really find this surprising, since guys like to look at attractive girls and girls like to see what other girls are wearing or doing. But, still. Kind of weird.

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  6. It seems that maybe, and I don't know this is just my opinion, that girls on facebook tend to be more active with writing on eachothers walls, tagging pictures, posting links, etc. etc. Whereas my guy friends all have facebook, but do not seem to use it as much. However, they tell me they go on it all the time...mainly to look at pictures. Odd.

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