Women More Likely to Follow Men on Twitter

In the wider world, Oprah Winfrey is vastly more influential than Ashton Kutcher. But Ashton trumps Oprah in the male-dominated Twitter-verse, where men have 15 percent more followers than women do. New research from Harvard Business School has shown that not only are men more likely to follow other men on Twitter, but women are also more likely to follow men. According to the study:

These results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women—men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know. [bold is theirs] Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).

Unlike the authors of this study, I don't wonder whether there is a major difference between the type of content created by men and women on Twitter when compared to other social networks. I think the difference is due to the sorts of people who use Twitter frequently. As the study also notes, 10 percent of Twitter users account for 90 percent of Tweets, and I would imagine that Twitter-lovers disproportionally come from the tech field, which is notoriously male-dominated.

I checked the people whom I follow on Twitter, and apparently I am an equal-opportunity follower: Of 98 individuals I follow, 48 are women (I follow 102 Twitter feeds in total, but because four are gender-neutral organizations like Newsweek, I didn't count them). How many women are you following? If you follow more men than women, why do you think that is?

Comments

Hmmm...

By: prismtrail | Tue, 06/09/2009 - 15:12

I'm really at a loss as to why more men would be followed than women. I follow about 80% more women, but I'm more involved in the art and craft movement. I've started to notice that men's tweets are more closed-ended, whereas women's tweets tend to invite discussion or response. But that could be an illusion on my part; I haven't done a clinical study! Perhaps men are more comfortable writing funny, and therefore are more entertaining. Because they generally don't worry about offending others, whereas women do worry about that more.

Are there simply more men on twitter?

I find that, when fumbling

By: nicolerenee | Fri, 06/05/2009 - 10:10

I find that, when fumbling around from one #followfriday post to the next, more links are to men. I think this is because when I check out their profiles, they are more likely to use Twitter as their soapbox for jokes, sarcastic commentary, dark humor, etc., whereas many women on Twitter are using it more to state their day-to-day activities, such as, "made awesome choc chip cookies, the boy loved them". Apparently I follow about the same number of men as women: 12 men, 13 women, 8 gender-neutral. However, more of the women are people I actually know- so I may be more interested in the minutiae of their lives, whereas most of the men are those witty types that I've never met but like to read their jokes.

We're talking small numbers but...

By: KateCal | Thu, 06/04/2009 - 04:38

...of the 42 I'm following, 16 are groups, 18 are men and only 8 are women. Of those following me, the vast majority are female. But, as I only tweet on women's rights issues, that is hardly surprising.

Definitely a subject worthy of further research...

Bucking the trend

By: Acadia Durham | Wed, 06/03/2009 - 17:38

In honor of this ground-breaking study, I'm going to do a little experiment, tweet about men and see who follows me. (I'm a woman. Duh.) It's like micro-chick-lit. Follow me on Twitter @acadiadurham. Or, for the longer version, visit the new blog: http://acadiadurham.blogspot.com/.

xoxo/cady