Why we don't club women anymore (Image via Flickr, By Lucian Venuthian, under CC)

Men and women behave differently. We all know this. I've actually seen some typical examples in the office just today. Darryn was flicking his hair around while the girls from the copy team spent their lunch playing a game of rugby - full contact. Honest.

It being Friday, I naturally had to explore these gender differences and share them with you in our weekly Fact Box. I'm pleased to see that the number of women online is growing all the time and - if the QuirkStation is anything to go by we should soon be dominating - enjoy the stats!

From Just Search - Some Stumble Statistics (November 2007)

• Stumble Upon Users: Male 57.13% Female 42.87%

From eMarketer - More Women Online (April 2007)

• Estimates from other research sources concur that females represent the majority of US Internet users, ranging from 53% (Arbitron and Edison Media Research, for Internet users ages 12 and older) down to 50.6% (comScore Media Metrix, for Internet users ages 2 and older).

• This year, an estimated 66.2% of US females ages 3 and older will use the Internet at least once a month, compared with 64.2% of males, according to eMarketer. By 2011, 72.1% of females are expected to go online, vs. 69.3% of males.

• Researchers that survey only the adult population still find that a greater percentage of males go online. MORI Research, for example, reported that as of March-April 2006, 73% of adult females and 79% of adult males went online. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that as of February-April 2006, 71% of adult females went online, vs. 74% of adult males.

From New Media Review - World & Regional Overview: From the European Travel Commission (May 2008)

• Women generally have more friends on social networks than men, according to a Rapleaf study of 30 million social network users worldwide. Of the people surveyed, 53.57% were female and 46.43% were male. A full 85% of respondents were from the US.

• The social network users were segmented into groups according to how many friends they had. Those with between 1 and 100 friends constituted the vast majority of social network users, 80% of the sample set.

• Within this group, women averaged 62 friends while men averaged 57 friends.

• Among those with 100 to 1,000 friends, which constituted 19% of the sample set, women had an average of 185 friends and men had an average of 172 friends.

• Though the difference is not drastic, Rapleaf postulates that women spend more time on social networks building and nurturing relationships, while men are more focused on acquiring relationships from a transactional point of view. (eMarketer, May 2008)

From The Digital Home - Just stop it already: Women do play video games (July 2008)

• According to CNN, "More than 60 percent of female students enrolled in game design programs at The Art Institutes said they believed male dominance in the industry is a deterrent to women pursuing a career in gaming, according to a survey commissioned by SOE."

From CNN.com/technology - Wooing women gamers - and game creators (February 2008)

• Studies and sales data have shown that women are more likely to play hand-held casual games, such as the Nintendo DS, along with social oriented games such as "The Sims," where women make up more than 55 percent of players.

• Though the number of women who play games is high, they represent just under 12 percent of the industry, according to the International Game Developers Association.

From Geek Estate - 2008 Stats from YouTube and Why You Should Use Video Tours (August 2008)

• 51% Male
• 49% Female

From New Media Update Men Want it Quick and on demand; women like to take their time and enjoy it  (Quoting a report from Nielsens) (February 2008)

• Video streams at broadcast network TV Web sites were nearly two times more likely to be viewed by women age 18-34 than men, who accounted for 22 percent and 12 percent of streams, respectively.

• For the top four Consumer Generated Media Web sites, streams were two and a half times more likely to be viewed by men 18-34 than women, who accounted for 27 percent and 11 percent of streams, respectively.