Study finds men are 49% more influential than women on Facebook
Baku, June 25 (AZERTAC). This is unlikely to go down well. Wanting to find out what type of people were most influential on Facebook, Dylan Walker, of the Stern School of Business in New York University, tracked an application where you could rate films on Facebook where users could send recommendations to friends to try out the app. He found that when women recommended the app to their friends, their male friends were much more likely to try out the app than female friends (around 1 1/2 times more), while overall men were found to be 49% more influential on the site.
The study also revealed that people who had their relationship status as `married` or `single` were far more likely to be trusted than those who were `in a relationship` or listed as `it`s complicated`. It seems we are evidently distrustful of the middle ground.
Age is also a factor with people over 31 being around 51% more likely to persuade their friends to try out the app than those aged under 18. Speaking on the study, Walker looks at how the findings can be applied for brands who run ad campaigns on Facebook, saying:
“I think Facebook is in a unique position to improve its advertising strategy and focus on the social factors that influence its users, for example, looking at the influence of advice from peers on what to buy, or at incentives that direct the spread of advertising campaigns,”
The study tracked over 1 million users of a particular app, so with a sample audience of that size it`s hard to dispute the findings. Though there are of course myriad external factors that could affect the findings, such as the purpose of the app, what category it sat in and what the incentive was for users. But when we are living in an age of influence, when you have entire companies dedicate to telling us how influential we are online (hello Klout), studies such as this are important as they tell us how likely someone is to actually propel someone into doing something, be it as small as downloading an app.
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