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The behavior of women (online and otherwise) has been written about extensively over the last few years. I happened to notice some new study findings on emarketer the other day, and, drawing inspiration from Chris Brogan, decided to write on the topic of how women use social media. After all, it’s generally a good idea to “write what you know”, and it’s always interesting to take a look at new observations.

The first article I saw on emarketer referenced the June 2011 Pew report “Social Network Sites and Our Lives”:

The Pew study found that 26% of female Facebook users and 17% of male Facebook users comment on Facebook posts at least once a day. Further, the study found that 57% of female Facebook users and 48% of male Facebook users comment on posts at least once a week.

This study surveyed Facebook users 18 and over. While it isn’t surprising that women of all ages “talk” more online, it’s of interest that just over a quarter of women who use Facebook are on it on a daily basis.

The excellent book Groundswell references 2010 study findings which revealed (of course) that all young people are more active on social networks than older segments of the population. Beyond that, young women tend to be Conversationalists while young men tend to be Creators (of content) and Critics (i.e., commenting on other people’s content). The idea that women exhibit conversational behavior on social media is also the main point of Andrew Keen’s recent video interview with Vickie Milazzo on Techcrunch .

A recent Huffington Post article  goes even further, quoting Rebtel CEO Andreas Bernstrom as saying:

Our findings show that men tend to lag behind women when it comes to communicating with others through social media, which debunks other recent studies that suggest that men are more savvy networkers between the sexes.

Nice praise indeed. I’m getting tired of hearing lectures on how women need to be more like men and become better networkers; this is a welcome change of pace.

But what about different segments within the female population, for example singles vs. married, moms, and Hispanics? I sense more blog posts coming on; so stay tuned. It’s early days for me in terms of blogging, but it seems that once you start writing and thinking, the topics you could write about become endless. And if I run out of ideas, I’m going back to Brogan’s post, which will no doubt spark new ideas.

Photo by Mike Licht