Comments on: Gender Bias: A Twitter Folly?

By: Acetylene Torch Basics

Acetylene Torch Basics — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:23:21 +0000

Twitter is nice in this year.

By: Galego

Galego — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:20:26 +0000

What can twitter do for you?

By: Sam Logan

Sam Logan — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:28 +0000

Interesting article. There is a study here (http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html) on gender trends on twitter. Worth looking at..

By: Zachary Tumin

Zachary Tumin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:07:19 +0000

I have always been intrigued by these same questions, Shuying, and esp #3. We do get cues from the photos and names, and stripped of those we may have different proclivities to follow. That would be a great experiment to run – couple of groups, same twitter content, different avatars. That would give you insight into how gender, race, age play into the decision to follow. But you’d still need to parse it into a variety of other follow behaviors as those factors will have greater or lesser salience, I’m guessing, depending on the vectors – that is, how the decision to follow is framed/the choice as presented initially.

By: Zachary Tumin

Zachary Tumin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:04:13 +0000

Laura – That’s an interesting suggestion – I’m betting there’s good research on how people perceive the “gender” of brands. And your suggestion that the behavior of women vs men could be explained by underlying rational vs (implicitly) biased gender-based behavior is a great insight. Many thanks for that.

By: Zachary Tumin

Zachary Tumin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:02:13 +0000

That’s interesting, Bill, and another factor worth noting – how “newbie” vs. “veteran” status might affect the follow/no-follow decision. It may have little or a lot of salience – I notice, for example, some veterans following everyone who follow them; and some who follow no one; but of course a “newbie” strategy is to follow as many as possible in the hopes of being followed back. These “follow vectors” have many factors going on; gender could be one, but the decision to follow is complicated and not easily explained by appealing to it. Thanks for your note.

By: Zachary Tumin

Zachary Tumin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:56:27 +0000

Fire EXIT: The juxtaposition in your post creates the right kind of dialogue on this issue.

By: Bill Smith

Bill Smith — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:23:26 +0000

I would offer a one feed anecdotal rejoinder: my sense is followers are more balanced after the initial start. This is based on operating the official University of Arkansas athletic department feed (@ArkRazorbacks). Once we got out of the first 200-300 followers — which were decidedly male — I have noticed as we have broaden into a “mainstream” of more Razorback fans joining I am seeing at least 50-50, if not slightly more female, followers joining the list.

This may be my own bias in trying to find a vehicle more open to both gender’s participation to broaden our base, but when compared to the traditional participatory media (message boards, old school full blogs with comment) there is a vastly higher number of women willing to follow. A typical message board might be 90-10 (even 95-5) on female identification (again, I will go with the point made that many women will avoid gender identity).

If we are even running at the 70-30 mentioned, that’s significant in my corner of the world.

Just some thoughts.

By: Gender Bias? « Fire EXIT

Gender Bias? « Fire EXIT — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:11:17 +0000

[...] Gender Bias: A Twitter Folly? There’s a claim made by researchers at Harvard Business School that men are followed disproportionately on Twitter. That may be true on a straightline basis. But there may be more – or less — here than the authors make out. The fact is, we can’t tell yet. [...]

By: Laura Lee Dooley

Laura Lee Dooley — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:43:09 +0000

Thanks for highlighting this report. Here are my 2 cents –

1. My initial reaction to all of this is similar to Shuying’s first thought – what about brands on twitter? Are they considered male/female or neuter? Wouldn’t it be interesting to do a study on how/if people perceive a gender of brands?

2. As a woman, I agree with the idea that women may “have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships.” Since the early days of the internet, we have been warned to be smart about who we connect with online. This may also account for the report’s suggestion that “men [may] find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).”

Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this study!