Women in a Web 2.0 Environment
There is a really interesting post on cnet and Informaiton Is Beautiful on the usage trends of the gender split in some of the most popular social networking sites.
I can see some kinds of trends here. According to the stats provided above, it seems like women prefer social networking sites whereas men prefer information driven sites like Digg and De.li.cious. I am not extremely surprised by the stats provided and was just wondering based on these stats, more research could be conducted to understand how gender differences could impact the usage of an Enterprise 2.0 platform. Does that mean that men will be more active in an information driven internal Enterprise 2.0 platform? Does that also mean that social networking within an organisation could potentially not be very successful if its a male dominated workplace?
More research needs to be conducted to find out more regarding usage patterns, types of activities, cultural differences and geographical differences to uncover more underlying information.
Herdy said,
This is interesting Sean. However, I don’t think this is a true reflection of Enterprise 2.0 usage (well, until a research proves otherwise).
The way I see it, these stats reflect on usage of Web2.0 in a ‘recreational’ context (i.e. usage for fun / on people’s spare time). Personally, it tells me that women spends their spare time socialising on the net, while men browse for trivial stuff (lolcats?).
I would be interested to know if anyone is currently looking at Enterprise 2.0 adoption from a gender perspective. I, myself, am looking into Enterprise 2.0 adoption and usage from a generational perspective.
BTW, you may be interested to read McKinsey’s latest Global survey on Web2.0. Follow the link at:
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_companies_are_benefiting_from_Web_20_McKinsey_Global_Survey_Results_2432
and
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Business_and_Web_20_An_interactive_feature_2431
Sean Lew said,
Hi Herdy,
I absolutely agree with you that its not a true reflection of Enterprise 2.0 usage. However, I was more of wondering if inherently women are more interested in social networking and men are more interested in informational stuff (trivial or not). I think this will be an extremely interesting research topic as it could potentially impact certain types of organisation that has gender skewed towards a specific gender. Understanding these differences could also help in increasing adoption and change management.
Thanks for the links. I have read both of them and I feel confident and encouraged that the world is taking a strong interest in Enterprise 2.0. There are still alot of work that still needs to be done, adoption to be driven and research to be done.
Could I ask where are you doing your research degree?
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