Behavior By Gender: Diversity Series

To follow up on my last post, I decided to take a look at how men and women use social notifications on our platform. For the uninitiated, notifications come in three flavors:

●     Invites, which are sent from one user to another, encouraging new users to come play the game
●     Messages, also sent from one user to another, often used for sending gifts or other specific items
●     Activities, which are posted to a users’ wall or other social feed, highlighting an achievement, mission accomplished, level-up, etc.

Looking at behavior over the past 6 months, activities by far are the most utilized form of social sharing on the Viximo platform. Nearly twice as many people have posted an activity than have sent an invite. That doesn’t mean that activities are more efficient for viral growth; the conversion rates from invites and messages are higher than from activities. In other words, users are more likely to click on a private message from a friend, rather than an activity post that is likely to get lost in their social feed.

What about gender differences? On average, men on our platform are 10% more likely to post activities to their social feeds. Women, on the other hand, are nearly 20% more likely than males to send invites. They also tend to invite more friends (22 on average, vs. 18 for men). Both genders are equally likely to send messages, but women send nearly 50% more messages per user.

Is it any surprise that guys like to blast their entire friend group with posts about their accomplishments within social games, while gals prefer one-on-one interactions? Maybe not. But considering the long-held stereotype that social games are made for bored housewives, I wasn’t expecting men to be big social sharers when it comes to game activity (at least not publicly).

Notifications are an important component of social game play (they put the “social” in social gaming). Obviously, they are key to growing your user base, but can also contribute to retention. It can be a challenge for both game developers and social networks to make the most of viral channels. Knowing how men and women use different types of notifications can be a key part of the optimization process. After all, viral channels are free, and who doesn’t want to reduce their marketing costs?

Anyone else out there surprised by these results?