When you start to write for computer publications, one of
the first lessons you learn is that your readers are guys.
The percentage of guy-ness has always been one of the big
differences between the magazines and Web sites, but the
range was always ran from between 90 percent male
readership to 60 percent male readership. Women, it was
said, didn't care about technology.
Sadly, this seemed to carry over to the Web. In the early
days of the Internet and the World Wide Web, only about 35
percent of the people online were women.
Yet as the Web became more and more mainstream, the
percentage of women online steadily increased. Now
MediaMetrix is announcing that in the first three months of
this year, 50.4 percent of the American Internet audience
was female.
These statistics are nothing less than the final argument
that the Web is a mainstream medium. Marketers know this. A
record or movie won't be a hit unless women buy it; you
think it's an accident that there have been far more cute
manufactured boy bands than chick groups in the last 30
years or so? Men can be counted on to embrace stuff for its
gadget value. Women tend to come along when they understand
that it's useful.
MediaMetrix's figures bear that out. They indicate that
women come online to do something specific -- research,
shop, chat. Men come online to ... well, just to be online.
This makes perfect sense to me. Contrast the way women use
a TV remote control against the way men use one. Men watch
TV; women watch programs on TV.
This is a wonderful trend. Gadgets come and go. Media with
genuine usefulness stick around. (Ever try to do serious
business over a CB radio?) And the presence of women online
in proportions that mirror their presence in the general
population is the strongest indicator yet that those of us
building the online world are not wasting our time creating
a fad.