UPDATE: There is a more recent post available, Social network demographics in 2012.
Have you ever wondered how many of Twitter’s users are women? Or men? What about Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, and other sites in the social media sphere?
We have tracked down this information for a number of social network sites (19 of them). All the major ones have been included, like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and also some of the most popular social news sites; Digg, Reddit and Slashdot.
Full list of sites in this mini study: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Slashdot, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, Last.fm, Friendster, LiveJournal, Hi5, Imeem, Ning, Xanga, Classmates.com, Bebo.
To determine the ratio between male and female users on these sites we used site demographics data for the United States gathered from Google’s Ad Planner service.
Male/female site user statistics
Before we move on to the chart, here are a few quick observations based on the results we got.
- 84% (16 out of 19) of the sites have more female than male users.
- The social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have significantly more male users than female. The standout here is Slashdot which takes male geekdom to new heights with 82% male users. 🙂
- If we hadn’t included the three social news sites, all of the sites would have had more females than males.
- Twitter and Facebook have almost the same male-female ratio; Twitter with 59% female users and Facebook with 57%.
- The most female-dominated site? Bebo (66% female users), closely followed by MySpace and Classmates.com (64%).
- The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47% male, 53% female.
And here’s a chart with the male/female ratio for all the sites, for your viewing pleasure:
The big question
Why do you think certain sites attract more males than females and vice versa? We’d love to hear what you think, so please let us know in the comments.
