The survey revealed that men are now utilizing social media networks such as Facebook much more than they did just a few years ago. Facebook, in fact, was beaten just barely by text messaging in this July 2010 survey, as the preferred means of communication for men.
Lines are also drawn between generations, with younger males utilizing Facebook more often than phone calls or texting to stay in touch with friends or family. Another thing to note here is that younger males also tend to be more social in real life than older males, which might be why social media is more important to their communications. Younger males also tended to use “old school” online communications such as e-mail and the telephone more than older males.
But the advances made across the ages are definitely encouraging for marketers, with almost 70% of the men that were surveyed stating that they logged into Facebook to communicate with others on a regular basis. Another media audit, also conducted in July 2010, showed that over 55% of Facebook users in the United States were female, meaning that men are still under-performing compared to their female counterparts, but that they really aren’t that far away. With 70% of men reporting that they do use social networks like Facebook on a regular basis, chances are looking good this gap will be bridged very soon.
Men are also much more comfortable using location-based services than women, which will make them much more likely to embrace Facebook’s New Places features, bringing in more males to the entire social media demographic. You can be sure that marketers are already eying this new opportunity and already have plans on how to market to the men that will be using this service.
Overall within the general population – men and women combined – Twitter was by far much less widely used than Facebook, texting, e-mail and phone usage for communication. The OTX survey for AskMen.com revealed that only 8.5% of males stated that they used the service on a regular basis. Almost 60% of respondents stated that they felt Twitter was “useless” and another 12% stated that they didn’t get what the service was or how it worked. As the sexes continue to battle it out, stay on top of studies such as this one so you’ll be able to understand the impact of marketing and technology trends as they impact Internet users moving forward. Internet marketers need to always be ready to adapt and evolve their business structure in order to accommodate the needs of their customer base or targeted customer base.
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