Social Media Favors Women?

The Social Media Gender Gap, printed in Bloomberg Business Week, promotes the idea of women gaining power online as a result of different Internet usage patterns between men and women. The article explains that as a result of women using the Internet in a more social manner, more Internet based services are becoming predominantly female oriented. In their words "the Internet is going to look pink. In other words, the future of social media is going to be all about the women. So if you're going to create the next hot Web 2.0 site and you want it to go viral, you'll target women." This is an interesting point of view, and although the author of the article makes many authoritative statements to this effect, one wonders how true this is and what the positive effects for women will be. The idea is that more sites and Internet advertising will be marketed towards women, but the article doesn't really address the question of whether women will gain more of a voice. The predictions for future innovations aren't terribly revolutionary either: "We'll see an interactive version of Oprah and some sort of choose-your-own-adventure soap opera.".

The article is interesting for me in that some of the class readings have debated the level of empowerment for women inherent in new technology like social media and the Internet in general. I tend to doubt that as technology develops that it will naturally tend towards the empowerment of women. Perhaps these technologies can be used as tools by women, but I don't generally see any advantage given specifically to women through these innovations. This article argues to the contrary.