On the back of that last post about women and social media, here's another perspective from Yahoo! and brand consultancy The Added Value Group.
As South African website memeburn says, the study centers around Yahoo!'s business model which exists in online publishing. As a result, the findings show that women may 'share' via social media but 'discover' and are influenced via targeted sites that appeal to their interests.
I've embedded the full presentation above, but some screen-shots of the most relevant slides are below, in particular:
Women get information about products and brands from review sites (58%), special interest sites (47%) and lifestyle sites (44%) over Twitter (16%) and other social networks (11%). In other words, despite the Facebook like button on most websites, FB is still used to post social status updates.
Women are more likely to connect with people who have "similar concerns" on online community groups and special interest sites. Social media is best for both close friends and acquaintances - and arguably the online world makes the line between the two blur anyway.
The key point - as several articles and studies have pointed to, social networks lead to shallower relationships with a larger group of people.
So, while TNS showed at the end of 2008 that UK housewives spend 47% of their free time online, mums at home are unlikely to post out any childcare problems on Facebook, let alone Twitter. Instead, what Yahoo! and the Added Value Group are saying is that you use the relative anonymity of special interest sites and communities to do so.
But - the fact remains, when it comes to what online tools women use, email and social media still reigns supreme.