LinkedIn is the White Male's Social Network

The Pew Research Center released a study on social networking a few days ago that - if you are interested in the social networking phenomenon - is a fascinating read. Most of their conclusions are related to Facebook: Facebook users are more trusting, they have more social support around them and they are more politically active, plus they are slowly getting older.

LinkedIn is very different from Facebook though - it is the only social network dominated by men. White, well educated men. Even Twitter which gets touted as being for breaking news is dominated by women but LinkedIn, which is for professionals, has majority white male users.

This is probably a reflection of the dominance of men in tech, and men in upwardly mobile positions. But given that the users of social networks are younger I would have hoped to see a better balance of women, but not yet. Not yet. Something we must continue to change.



Less surprising is that the LinkedIn users are better educated than the other networks, but as with the gender imbalance it's disappointing to see how very low the percentage of LinkedIn's users are black.