Gender Differences in ReTweeting

Aug 10th 2009 View Comments




Not all viral content sharing on Twitter happens in ReTweets, so when I designed my viral Tweeting survey, I included three similar questions:

1) What types of content do you ReTweet?
2) What types of content do you Tweet about?
3) What types of content do you Tweet links to?

They’re all pretty similar, but there are obvious differences in each. For instance, people are OK Tweeting about their own opinions, but are unlikely to Tweet links to or ReTweet other peoples’ opinions.

But here’s where the data gets really interesting, the graph below shows the differences in answers by the gender of the respondent. 10.5% more women than men say they ReTweet entertainment content, while 32.2% more men Tweet about their opinions.

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  • http://impactmarketingzone.com Maria Reyes-McDavis

    The gender differences surprised me a bit. I would have thought it be the other way around, especially given topics. Great stuff, as usual Dan.

  • http://twitter.com/techeden Eden

    Interesting…I love these little studies. Out of curiosity where’d you get your sample population from and how many people was it comprised of (e.g., how many males versus females)?

  • http://webecologyproject.org David Fisher

    Sample size?
    Margin of error?
    How confident do you feel that this was a truly random sample and representative of the overall Twitter population and not just the social media/tech types that follow you?

  • Edward Virtually

    Seems like sexist pseudo-science to me. You quote no data source, and your metrics don’t accurately reflect my retweets or those of numerous other males I follow. Maybe you just follow simpleminded men for some reason?

  • http://www.ckrinteractive.com Skye Callan

    Interesting information. I too am curious about the sample size and where your sample population came from.

  • http://www.crearecommunications.co.uk Mat

    @ Maria, i too was suprised by the gender differences, though i dont want to stereotype the sexes.

  • http://learnedonwomen.com Andrea Learned

    Interesting enough findings to inspire a larger study by a recognized research organization…I’d say. Another variable to consider: aren’t the bulk of men/women on Twitter really all about marketing or business? So “selling of yourself” is key and that can be done in different ways. Some people choose the “about me” angle and others choose the “share info” angle. It may boil down to gender to some degree, but there are also just differences in individual business style. Good conversation to start, Dan!

  • danzarrella

    testing disqus

  • Anonymous

    testing disqus

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