• Flickr is 55 percent female.
• Twitter is 57 percent female.
• Facebook is 57 percent female.
• Ning is 59 percent female.
• MySpace is 64 percent female.

However, Youtube and LinkedIn are 50/50 and Digg is 64% men.

These figures tell us that to some extent women and men differ in the way they like to engage with social media. Although these figures could not prove this notion at all, I could argue that women like to share something and then discuss it, while men share without the need for the discussion (Digg).

That means that companies thinking about using social media to engage with their (potential) customers need to take these differences into account. No more one size fits all; they will need to specify their social media strategie to cater to the needs of both ‘the female’ and ‘the male’.

For open innovation this could also have implications. You would need to give women the opportunity to reflect on other peoples ideas and possibly enrich them, while men would possibly tend more toward just ‘digging’ good ideas.

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