Who Runs the Social Media World: Men or Women? [infographic]

Several key studies on social media revealed an insight that we’ve long suspected: women dominate this territory.

But it’s not just in numbers, especially in the top social networks; women set the pace in social media in many other ways.

Pulling out data from Pew, Nielsen, and Burst Media independent social media survey in 2013, an infographic published by FinancesOnline.com presents a quick review how women rule social media today in six significant areas.

These “areas of dominance” establish women as a key demographic unit in social media (and the Internet by extension) that brand marketers and content providers will do well to heed.

Here are the key areas of dominance:

• There are more women in top social sites: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest
• Women use social media more often daily: 30% of online U.S. women check their social sites several times in a day versus 26% of online U.S. men
• Women interact with brands more often: 55% of online U.S. women access deals compared to just 36% of online U.S. men
• 58% of those who consume news in social media are women
• More women use smartphones and tablets to access social media
• Women drive the trend towards visually oriented social sites such as Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest, which are the three fastest growing social media networks today

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Driving trends

Most tellingly, two trends illustrate how women are setting the pace in social media.

First, they are driving the migration of social media access from desktop to mobile. A recent Business Insider report said that 60% of social media time is spent in smartphones and tablets.

In the Pew and Burst Media studies, 46% of online U.S. women access their social accounts via smartphones, while 32% of the same group use tablets to check their social sites.

For men it’s 43% and 20%, respectively. When industry watchers say mobile is the future of social media, they might as well mean women are its future.

Second, women are setting the trend towards the visual web.

Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest are the three fastest growing social networks today, earning ten million new users each in just a year.

While women dominate these three sites, it’s Pinterest that showcases to what extent women crave for visually oriented social sharing: 33% of online U.S. women use this network; for men, it’s only 8%.

We expect more visual social networks in the next few months, and if they’re savvy, they should be luring women more than anyone else.

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