More women crashing Google+ sausage party
Early reports had figured the membership of Google+ to be upwards of 87 percent male. But new analysis shows a very different gender balance.
Apparently, Google+ isn't quite the frat party it first appeared to be.
Early reports had figured the membership of Google+ to be upwards of 87 percent male. But evidently the data on which those estimates were based--culled from sites like Socialstatistics.com and Findpeopleonplus.com--was skewed. Now, new analysis performed by Paul Allen of FamilyLink and Ancestry.com shows a very different gender balance.
Using a method he calls "surname-based random sampling," with which he correctly predicted Google+'s 10 million member milestone, Allen found Google+ to be 66.4 percent male and 33.6 percent female.
That's a dude-heavy social environment, compared with its more gender-balanced rival Facebook, but one whose gender distribution is a bit more equitable than the 90:10 ratio of men to women previously reported.
And it might be becoming more balanced by the day. According to Allen's estimates Google+ was 77 percent male and 23 percent female on July 4. Three days later it was 68.4 percent male and 31.6 percent female, and as of Saturday it was nearing a 2-to-1 male/female ratio.
"Google+ is quickly turning pink," Allen said in a post to Google+. "The poster of 18 men in a hot tub that has been passed around for the past week or two is not reflective of reality and is not what Google+ is going to end up being."
That said, it was an awesome picture.
