I hear that 75% of Google+ users are male. Which, of course, is quite different to the gender balance on other social media like Facebook, Twitter, forums, blogs etc.
So why are there not so many women on G+? I must admit to having gone back there, after an initial leaving in a huff. I left because I didn’t have time to deal with yet another social media outlet. But I came back because some of the people I like talking to are more available on G+ than on other media. And because G+ gives me more control over my privacy online than some other social media. But that doesn’t explain why other women are not there in greater numbers.
Perhaps one factor is that women get the point of social media: it’s for socialising. Until a critical mass of their friends are there, they won’t have reason to leave other networks and spend time in a new network. But because we like socialising, once that critical mass is reached, women will flood into the network as we invite our female friends over to play.
It could also be about the user interface. There is nothing much to the Twitter interface, and Facebook is something everyone is used to. G+’s lack of time-wasting games may work against it, because so many less tech oriented users learn to navigate an environment through games where it doesn’t annoy anyone if they click the wrong button.
Maybe it is also a statement about why women so dominate other forms of social media, not about why women are not among the mostly tech worker early adopters of a new social media network. There are a lot of women in our society who are isolated at home while the toddler is napping, or kids are at school, or the baby is awake at 3am and will only settle with an hour-long feed. Social media is a sanity break for so many women with short bursts of time to pass, but no energy left for deeply thought out interactions. And unlike phone calls, you can put something out there on social media with no requirement for your friends to reply immediately if they’re busy.
Maybe.
