News Blog

A new report on the tech habits of women shows that the female of the species is edging out the male in the areas of DVR use and ownership of portable game devices.

The study, done independently by Solutions Research Group, and released Thursday, was undertaken to explore the "digital lifestyles" of American women. Data was collected from more than 2,000 respondents between October 2006 and February 2008.

What the final tally shows is that women are as comfortable with popular consumer technology as men (not really a surprise), and that they're making significant inroads into the gaming lifestyle, which has long been dominated by men.

Women who own DVRs spend more than half of their TV viewing time watching time-shifted content.

(Credit: TiVo)

For example, SGR characterizes women who own DVRs as much "more enthusiastic" about them than men. That's because women spend 56 percent of their TV-watching time viewing time-shifted content on their DVR. Men spend 42 percent of their time using their DVRs. The discrepancy between the two has much to do with the type of shows men and women watch, according to Kaan Yigit, SGR's director of syndicated studies.

"Men are more likely to watch sports, which has more impact live, obviously," he said. Women are more likely to watch half-hour comedies and 1-hour dramas, he said. Because of those same content preferences, women are also more likely to stream television shows from network TV Web sites.

In the gaming realm, men continue to lead in playing video game consoles--half of all men had played a console game in the previous month, whereas 38 percent of women had--but women are demonstrating a taste for portable game devices. Fourteen percent of women who describe themselves as "gamers" own a PSP (PlayStation Portable), compared to 11 percent of men who are gamers.

"It's a marginal difference, but in every other category, men or boys are slightly or substantially higher, as in the case of Xbox 360 ownership," Yigit said. "We find in general that girls and young women are more likely to skew to (owning) portable units, like the Game Boy Advance for the convenience and portability."

Our (parent . thesis) blog is two months old now, and writing it has given me a renewed feeling that a woman's angle on technology is distinct from the male point of view.

I sometimes feel like I am living in a high-tech version of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which I think of as Gadgets are from Mars, Connections are from Venus.

Could the company that brought you this cinematic classic manage to create a successful women's Web site network?

(Credit: National Lampoon)

Comedy house National Lampoon, which has brought the entertainment world everything from Animal House to the more recent Van Wilder, is courting the babes. A Media Week article details the brand's impending launch of 8228, the latest addition to the online National Lampoon Humor Network, which is a network of gossip and entertainment sites for a female audience.

We're guessing the tone will be a little different from TeamSugar or iVillage.

Expanding its Web presence is inherently a good move for National Lampoon: Van Wilder was a hit on DVD among the college crowd, but the once-iconic comedy brand has been largely eclipsed at the box office by such "Frat Pack" hits as Old School and Wedding Crashers, and more recently the phenomenon of Judd Apatow-affiliated "bromances" like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. And apparently, the Lampoon has thus far been successful in its digital initiatives--the formation of a network of college-oriented media sites, including the purchase of DrunkUniversity.com earlier this year, has helped to boost its Web traffic, and some viral buzz has ensued from a fake movie trailer about two dumb college students who pledge a frat called 'Alpha Qaeda.'

Launching a targeted set of "gossip and entertainment" sites for women, however, has the potential for disaster. Many female Web users just don't like being pigeonholed; Gawker Media's Jezebel blog has turned out to be a surprising success, but the company was walking a fine line by launching a brand specifically geared toward women. As Jossip puts it with regard to 8228, "We're thinking Animal House meets The Vagina Monologues. We're also thinking, 'This is National Lampoon's worst idea since Van Wilder 2: The Rise Of Taj.'" Couldn't have put it better myself.

In any case, let's hope they don't make it pink.

The BlogHer '07 conference met in Chicago last weekend, bringing together 800 women of the 13,000 members of this vibrant online community. If you didn't hear about it, it's because the national media didn't bother to report it.

Jennifer Pozner, founder of Women in Media & News (WIMN), writes a scathing analysis of this oversight on the Women's Media Center blog, reporting that "only three Chicago newspapers covered the conference, as if this national assemblage of women writers and videographers were simply a local story. Not one national network or cable news broadcast deigned to mention it."

Apparently all those advertisements saying you'll get better pictures of your kids with a digital SLR camera are paying off.

Women are the primary user of digital SLRs in more than half of households surveyed.

(Credit: Photo Marketing Association)

The primary digital SLR (single-lens reflex) user in the United States is a woman 51 percent of the time among those surveyed, according to new study results released Monday by the Photo Marketing Association. Among those households where women are the primary user, the average annual income is at least $75,000, and they're much more likely than most to have children under 6 years old.

"You can always find females among prosumers and photo artists, but seeing quite a few young mothers in the mix means they respond to messages about capturing fast-action pics of their kids," said Dimitrios Delis, director of PMA marketing research.

Digital SLR popularity has been in part a response weak indoor and action shots from early digital point-and-shoot cameras, he added. Action shots that suffered from shutter lag--the delay between pressing the shutter release button and the camera actually taking the photo.