Things must have been a little alarming for Google last week, when someone figured that Google+, the company's new social networking application, had drawn 90 percent male users in its beta program.
Talk about a one-sided party.
The good news this week for Google is that recent estimates point to a growing number of women creating Google+ accounts, according to PC World, and that the service is now one-third women. That must be more than a little bit of a relief: no one ever wants to be the guys throwing the wild party that only the guys show up to. (I won't mention the crude term used to describe such parties.)
It was Paul Allen, who runs both FamilyLink and Ancestry.com, that put forth the revised figure of one-third women on Google+ to two-thirds men. However, this still means that Google's new brainchild is far more male-intensive than other social networking Web sites.
A Pew report has estimated that more women than men are present on many other social networks: Twitter users are apparently 64 percent female, and both MySpace and Facebook have a majority of female users (57 percent and 58 percent female users, respectively).Only business-based social networking site LinkedIn has a male majority: the site's female users stand at only 37 percent.
So with female majorities on other popular social networking sites, why is Google+ so male dominated? One theory is that the early invitees to join Google+ in beta are largely tech industry insiders, IT workers and engineers, who tend to be predominantly male. As beta users start inviting friends and family to the program, however, the number of women would appear to be rising.
So we can all try to forget the iconic image of 18 guys in a hot tub. If we try hard enough.
Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TechZone360. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves