A friend sent me an article from the Daily Mail, Women talk three times as much as men, which falls in well with my gender-based marketing postings. Neither the information in this article nor the study it references surprise me. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with them, only that they don't surprise me. Any student of anthropology, behavioral ethology or neurophysiology would have learned these things in school. What it has to do with is gossip...There's more research being done on gossip than most people might think, and both genders gossip. Women gossip to establish community, men gossip to establish hierarchy, and both genders play this out on the web. Look at the Loyalty charts I shared in Gender-Based Loyalty, part 2/4b and show here (female top, male bottom).
The women's chart shows an amazing, almost exponential increase in women's loyalty to the sites they're visiting. The men's chart shows a fairly steady decline in loyalty to the sites they're visiting.What you're seeing in the women's chart is the establishment of community.
In the men's chart, literally, the establishment of hierarchy. The greater number of women gather in a place, virtual or otherwise, the more women as a group will demonstrate loyalty to that place. The greater number of men gather in a place, virtual or otherwise, the fewer men will -- as a rule -- show loyalty to that place...unless a strong male emerges to define the hierarchy of the group. But with no strong, defining male? Competition increases and an increase in competition means my place in the hierarchy is constantly in jeopardy. I, as a male, can't feel comfortable there, so why stick around?For those with an interest, I wrote about a similar phenomenon in Measuring Value in Wikis and Blogs.
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Tracked on: December 13, 2006 1:59 PM | Permalink to Trackback