Man, Woman & Web

Man, Woman & Web
Written by Chris Minnick
5/29/2009


Does Internet use depend on gender?

In pursuit of this controversial topic, I contacted four women and four men I respect. I asked each of them, “Is there a difference between how men and women use the Internet?”

Every one of the men mentioned pornography and its relative popularity with men and women (it’s more popular with men, they claim), as the biggest difference. Most of the women I spoke with agreed.

Shoe shopping ran a close second in my informal survey. All of the women, and one of the men, said they believe that women shop for and buy shoes online much more frequently than men.

These observations, while interesting, turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. As I started researching the topic, I found numerous articles, studies, blog posts, and books that have been written about the differences between men and women on the Web. These range from typical male- or female-bashing jokes to serious studies done by reputable organizations like the University of California and the Pew Internet & American Life Project .

Some of the male/female differences I found in my search include the following:

* Women tend to use the Internet to communicate with other people and develop relationships.
* Men tend to use the Internet for information gathering (which, according to one of my contacts, a librarian, includes porn), and for communicating with organizations.
* Women are more patient Web surfers than men. My theory: It’s due to our statistically shorter lifespan that men are much quicker to hit the back button or lose interest if a page is slow or requires a long download.
* Women consider options, images, subtle clues, and context more often when making choices online.
* Men value efficiency and getting the job done as quickly as possible.
* Men use social media for marketing, gaining power, competition, and to help them achieve goals. Women use social media to be social.

These statements are, of course, generalizations. However, the differences in the studies I’ve seen are actually quite large, and the amount of data leaves no doubt that men and women do use the Internet differently.

Given this, it’s logical that search engines and larger retail Websites ought to be able to detect the gender of site users (if they don’t already) and make adjustments to create a better user experience.

It turns out that Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)’s advertising research organization, adCenter Labs, has built a tool for doing just that. For any search query or URL, the demographics prediction tool will return a gender and age distribution prediction. The purpose of the tool is to help merchants better understand their audience before bidding on keywords.

Someone who searches for “shoe shopping,” for instance, is 83 percent likely to be female. Even searches for words that appear to be gender-neutral sometimes result in a surprisingly confident gender prediction. For example, a searcher for “pencil” is 62 percent likely to be a woman.

This kind of information has product implications. If Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) were to predict and take into account the gender of a searcher, for instance, it might not have to pay as much attention to the speed at which results show up for women users. Instead, the focus could be on providing women with more data -- including screenshots, images, and site reviews -- to help them to make decisions about which site to visit.

Men, on the other hand, would see pretty much the same stripped-down, fast, plain-text search results that Google currently shows by default -- but we would be more likely to see how-to articles and videos, and, of course, adult sites, among the results.

It seems to me that what I’ve stumbled on here is a fundamental problem with the Web: We need two of them! At the very least, it’s possible that gender detection may someday be as common as browser detection. Then, we'll no longer accept Websites that don't accommodate the very different needs of the sexes.






Maybe off the topic a little, but if there's gonna be a gender search engine, may I suggest the name "ging.com" or sth, cos that seems to be the trend for domain names nowadays, you know, like ping.fm, ning.com, and bing.com (coming-soon) ...

So, I google "shoe shopping". It thinks I'm a woman and gives me a pinky, slow-loading list of search results with all the details. Being a man, I impatiently and quickly hit the back button. I do the search again with more specific key words like "men's shoe shopping" and now the search engine comes up with a high probability that I might be gay... And again, being a man, I probably lose interest by then... So, while there might be some benifit for search engines to predict and adapt to gender, there's also equally a drawback where the feature could drive away other potential customers for the very same reason.




Chris - I was nodding my head as I was reading your post. Men and women do use the internet differently, and I think it reflects on how men and women are different in general.

Having worked in a technical field for the last 15 years, I have been outnumbered by men. I have come to realize that I'm just different than most of my teammates. I don't mean that this is bad, I think I may have a better understanding of men than some women because of this. We are hard wired differently, there is no question about it. I have used the internet for both research for school and work as well as for shopping, and believe me I can shop. I've never met a shoe sale I didn't like.

Should there be two different internets depending on gender? It would be interesting but what a headache for all involved. And if I wanted to could I use the "man only" sites? I certainly hope so.




Thing is ,Men and Women have different neurological pahways and something to do with Hormones....

Its time to seriously consider building websites with HIs/Her sections.Only problem;I can even right now visualise the number of people who will sue for discrimination.It sure as hell will be fun in the Court systems!!!

Ashish.


I guess this is similar to the discussion two weeks ago (see comment 'What Meaneth Thou...' ) on another thread about data and how it's both gathered and used. It tends to be VERY subjective, and in many cases, tailored to result in supporting the desired outcome.

Chris mentioned a tool being developed to perform gender recognition based on the structure of searches, and this one makes me laugh heartily. In our house, my two daughters will almost surely be mis-categorized because of how they've learned to search for things. I think anyone who has spent years performing research on the Internet has learned to think critically about how ot structure queries, and rather than searching for 'shoe shopping', they may search for "brand+color+style" which may make them more difficult to categorize.

This presumed gender predictive research may be based on flawed assumptions, that in part, a simpler phrase or combination in terms, would be the manner in which someone female may search for something... or that the use of terms like 'shopping' would indicate that. It may go further and wait until the subsequent search, and as others have stereotypically stated when a female describes a car or a dog, the first thing they use is the color =) Sorry... it's not always true

Do we need two Internets, one that serves males and one that serves females? No, I seriously doubt it. Those developing websites and those who design the tags, and other site optimization tools have been, and are continuing to, refine techniques to ensure whoever searches for the content on a website find the sites THEY work on.

So for me, where the rubber really meets the road is in the owners of websites understanding what needs to occur to reach the potential users of the information that exists there, regardless of their gender... but more dependent upon their interests.