Women’s presence on social networks is far greater than that of men, according to Pingdom’s demographic study of 19 social networking sites.

Eighty-seven percent of social networks have more female users than males. Those with the highest percentage of female users are Bebo, MySpace, Classmates, Xanga, Ning and Twitter.

Two-thirds of Bebo’s users are female, while MySpace and Classmates have close to that (64 percent each).

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Eight out of 10 smartphone consumers have problems accessing content, according to Xiam discovery research (PDF). The findings are based survey of over 400 UK and US smartphone users.

(Since comparing networks across countries is not apples to apples, I’ll focus strictly on the US users).

The major problem is that content is slow to load and/or is hard to find. Sixty-one percent of smartphone users reported this problem, while fifty-seven percent had phone/interface issues and 11 percent had payment issues.

Twenty-seven percent of the time, they couldn’t find what they’re looking for.

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In the last six months, the number of high school and college students using Facebook has declined 16.5 and 21.7 percent respectively, while the numbers of users over the age of 55 has shot up 513.7 percent, according to iStrategyLabs.

Are young people switching to new social networking sites? Has Twitter become a Facebook to Facebook’s MySpace? Is the study fundamentally flawed, or are the numbers simply skewed because the kids are on summer break?

There has been a lot of controversy about iStrategyLabs’ findings, but they’re interesting, nonetheless.

Incidentally, while this study was circulating through the Webs, we had a large group (50+) of French telecommunications students at L’Atelier today. To a one, they are all on Facebook.

None are on Twitter.

Social networking sites and job professionalism do not mix. This fact has been established by too many photo tag-happy individuals who cannot keep their privacy settings straight. Just assume that your prospective employers, university admission officers, and even your Craigslist ride-share will be entering your name into the Friend Finder search box on Facebook.

Setting new standards in the Questionable Privacy Priorities category is the City of Bozeman of the Big Sky State Montana. As Montana’s News Station reported yesterday, a viewer expressed concern of the city’s enthusiastic background check policy. This policy states that applicants must present social networking account log-in user names and password, in order to be considered eligible for application processing.

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Social network usage passed email in February, according to Nielsen. Social networking sites had a global reach of 68.4 percent that month, compared to email’s reach of 64.8 percent.

In a three-month period from December 2008 to February 2009, social networking sites grew 1.6 percent, while email reach actually declined 0.3 percent.

One of the key drivers to social media reach was mobile. Mobile social networking nearly tripled in 2008.

The report also gives hard figures on another trend which, like mobile, is based less on sociological whims than it is on the price of the technology needed to participate: the growing number of users of long-form video sites like Hulu.

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A new report to the US Attorney General reveals that the biggest threat to children on the Internet is . . . other kids. This finding flies in the face of media sagacity, which holds that children are Blakean angels.

“[T]he risks minors face online are complex and multifaceted and are in most cases not significantly different than those they face offline, and that as they get older, minors themselves contribute to some of the problems,” says the report.

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As a baseball fan, reality is incomplete until it is quantified. That’s why reading Nielsen’s report of Twitter’s 2008 growth is fascinating, despite the fact that everyday we read about who or what is now tweeting.

Between Septembers 2007 and 2008, Twitter’s audience grew from 533,000 to 2,359,000 users, a change of 343 percent.  It’s almost three times the growth of the other site that gets as much press: Facebook.  Surprisingly, as fast as Facebook is growing, it is only the 6th fastest site.

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Online retailers are following under-30s shoppers to social sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. “Generation Y online buyers” participate in Internet activities more than any younger generation, and this influences their online spending habits.

The Society for New Communications Research study entitled, “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media,” confirms the importance that this demographic holds for online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs.  These sources of information seem to be divorced from traditional marketing strategies, and therefore have more credibility.

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This morning, Michael Arrington, co-editor of TechCrunch.com, started his blogging day by complaining and mixing up the meaning of “interest into someone’s content” and “friendship” on a post. He claims the need to fake being someone’s friend to better use Twitter. Not to worry, this is very common in online social networking, especially with egocentric personalities.

The website talked about is the popular Twitter (www.twitter.com), which provides a way for people to express themselves about anything, as long as the message fits into 140 characters maximum. You can choose to follow anyone and monitor all of their messages.

So what Arrington complains about happens a lot in social networking sites. It’s when “following” someone or “subscribing” to someone’s list equals for a lot of people the same thing as being “friends” with this person, taking the true meaning of friendship to the bottom level. If it is not reciprocated, frustration and pressure come into place.

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NowPublic.com released Tuesday its second MostPublic index, showing the 50 most influential people in Silicon Valley/San Francisco. “The MostPublic Index is a detailed (and transparent) barometer of who’s [sic] voices are most heard in the digital landscape as new channels—Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the like—transform how media is created and spread.”

The Vancouver-based participatory news network rated the individuals based on four measures: online visability; presence on user-generated content and social networking sites; interactivity and accessibility; and what they call The “R” factor, presence on microblogging platforms like Flickr, Twitter, and Tumblr.

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