Following is a guest post from a friend of mine, Lorraine Ball, owner of RoundPeg she has been reading our book and doing some survey work of her own.  Very interesting early results!

Published in 1992, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus has sold more than 7 million copies.   It has launched a firestorm of discussion about the differences between male and female communication patterns.

Over the years many other authors have tackled elements of these differences, including  Hazel Walker, Frank De Raffele and Ivan Misner, Ph.D.  Their new book, Business Networking and Sex explores how these gender differences affect us in the workplace.  As I read the book, I wondered, if we behaved differently on social media as well? So we added a few questions to our latest social media survey, and were surprised by how dramatic the differences are.

We are early in the study, and this may change as more responses come in, but preliminary results indicate that women clearly prefer Facebook for business connections while men gravitate toward twitter.  Why?  These results seem to support the assertions of the authors, women like to build relationships, and that is easier on Facebook, while men seem to prefer the the more direct, short style of twitter.

Another surprise?  Almost as many women gravitate to the very formal LinkedIn environment.  Why?  I think it is rule. This is a clearly defined business environment.  There is no gray area where comments can be misconstrued as flirting rather then business.

What do you think?  Do the results support what you have seen?   Add your experiences to our survey.