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The Latest On How Women and Men Use the Internet
I'm fascinated with search.
As a market researcher, I seek for opportunities based on data detailing consumer behaviours and preferences. As a radio personality, I sought ways to entertain and inform the largest amount of people by viewing pop culture in my own way. As a student, simply learning in a classroom or devouring a book wasn't enough; I needed to spend extra time asking questions and seeking answers to my complex questions with teachers and professors over coffee for hours on end. Reading about Rome or Paris or Bogota or Munich or Santiago's history wasn't enough; I needed to go there and experience it for myself.
For me, search is a deep, exploratory thing. And I love it.
I've always been labeled as a curious soul, someone always asking questions, trying to connect dots, to find meaning in data, observations, history, scenarios or concepts. Of course, that's not an exclusive label. We are all searching, consciously or unconsciously. It's why a song like U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" resonates so deeply with people across the globe, regardless of culture or language.
Search is mankind's fuel for its holy grail: true knowledge. It is search that drives us for understanding and for innovation. Yet, we are not all the same when it comes to search. Especially on-line.
A recent PEW Internet study exploring how men and women use the Internet points out some interesting differences between the sexes. It's more than just men searching for porn and women searching for shoe porn. Or is it? This study caught my attention because it's fascinating to see how millions of years of conditioning and the differences in our respective genetic wiring affect our use of new technology. The PEW study echoed many stereotypes we think exist in the other gender off-line.
Men like the experiences the Internet offers while women like the new communities they form. In essence, women are more "chatty" (heavier use of IMs, two-or-more web cam conversations for the tech savvy, much more detailed emails exchanges and attracted to web portal sharing communities) while men are more blunt and one-way (shorter to-the-point online posts and emails, quick [if any] IMs and more one-way info gathering), preferring to get what they want as fast as possible, quickly moving on the next task. Women will linger longer while searching; men tend to focus on the top results, get it, and move on.
Sounds like a typical exercise in shopping at a mall.
PEW study here
posted by Unknown @ Sunday, February 26, 2006,
