<\/span><\/p>\n It feels like we\u2019re in a Golden Age of the web, led by consumer internet services and e-commerce. \u00a0Just consider these stats: Facebook\u2014over\u00a0600 million users<\/a>.\u00a0 Twitter\u201425 billion tweets<\/a>\u00a0last year. Tumblr\u20141 billion page views a week<\/a>. \u00a0Zynga\u2014100 million users<\/a>\u00a0on Cityville in just 6 weeks.\u00a0 We\u2019re witnessing a generation of consumer web companies growing at an unprecedented rate in terms of both user adoption and revenue.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s a little secret that\u2019s gone unnoticed by most.\u00a0 It\u2019s\u00a0women<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer internet and e-commerce companies. \u00a0Especially when it comes to social and shopping, women rule the Internet.<\/p>\n Consider some more data. Comscore, Nielsen, MediaMetrix and Quantcast studies all show women are the driving force of the most important net trend of the decade, the social web.\u00a0Comscore<\/a>\u00a0says women are the majority of users of social networking sites and spend 30% more time on these sites than men; mobile social network usage is 55% female according to\u00a0Nielsen<\/a>.<\/p>\n In e-commerce, female purchasing power is also pretty clear.\u00a0 Sites like Zappos (>$ 1 billion<\/a>\u00a0in revenue last year), Groupon\u00a0($ 760m<\/a>\u00a0last year), Gilt Groupe ($ 500m<\/a>\u00a0projected revenue this year), Etsy\u00a0(over $ 300m<\/a>\u00a0in GMV last year), and Diapers\u00a0($ 300m<\/a>\u00a0estimated revenue last year) are all driven by a majority of female customers.\u00a0\u00a0According to Gilt Groupe, women are 70% of the customer base and they drive 74% of revenue. \u00a0And\u00a077% of Groupon\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0customers are female according to their site.<\/p>\n Women even shop more on\u00a0Chegg<\/a>, which offers textbook rentals on college campuses across the country.\u00a0Males and females attend college at an almost even rate. Renting would seem an equal opportunity money saver, plus it\u2019s better for the planet.\u00a0 But according to Chegg, females are 65% of renters.\u00a0 Why? Renting requires a little more advanced planning.\u00a0 Chegg\u2019s research shows women are more inclined to plan ahead than men.\u00a0And, they seem to care more about saving money, and are more likely to be influenced by a friend\u2019s recommendation.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no accident Amazon.com launched a program called \u201cAmazon Mom\u201d last year, or that they bought both Zappos and Quidsi (parent company of Diapers.com, BeautyBar.com and Soap.com) for almost $ 1.8 billion in total.\u00a0 According to the US Census Bureau, women oversee over 80% of consumer spending, or about $ 5\u00a0trillion<\/em>\u00a0dollars annually. Women control the purse strings when it comes to disposable income. That\u2019s long been the case.<\/p>\n But what\u2019s different now is that there is an exciting new crop of e-commerce companies building real revenue and real community,\u00a0really fast<\/em>, by purposefully harnessing the power of female consumers.\u00a0\u00a0One Kings Lane<\/a>,\u00a0Plum District<\/a>,\u00a0Stella & Dot<\/a>,\u00a0Rent the Runway<\/a>,\u00a0Modcloth<\/a>,BirchBox<\/a>,\u00a0Shoedazzle<\/a>,\u00a0Zazzle<\/a>,\u00a0Callaway Digital Arts<\/a>, and\u00a0Shopkick<\/a>\u00a0are just a few examples of companies leveraging \u201cgirl power.\u201d\u00a0 The majority of these companies were also founded by women, which is also an exciting trend.<\/p>\n And take a look at four of the new \u201chorsemen\u201d of the consumer web\u2014Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Zynga<\/a>,\u00a0Groupon<\/a>and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>. \u00a0This may surprise you, the majority of all four properties\u2019 users are female.\u00a0 Make that \u201chorsewomen\u201d.<\/p>\n Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, has talked about how women are not only the majority of its users, but drive\u00a062%<\/a>\u00a0of activity in terms of messages, updates and comments, and 71% of the daily fan activity. \u00a0Women have 8% more Facebook friends on average than men, and spend more time on the site. \u00a0According to an early Facebook team member, women played a key role in the early days by adopting three core activities\u2014posting to walls, adding photos and joining groups\u2014at a much higher rate than males.\u00a0 If females had not adopted in the early days, I wonder if Facebook would be what it is today. (Why do you think all the guys showed up?)<\/p>\n How about gaming, seemingly a bastion of men in their man caves?\u00a0 The titan of social gaming,Zynga<\/a>, says 60% of players are female. \u00a0And a survey by\u00a0PopCap<\/a>\u00a0shows females are the majority of social and casual game players. In fact, they note the average social gamer is likely a 43-year-old woman.<\/p>\n And more women use\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, which has a reputation for being a techie insider\u2019s (i.e., male) product.\u00a0 Women follow more people, tweet more, and have more followers on average than men, according to bloggers\u00a0Dan Zarella<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Darmesh Shaw\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0analyses.<\/p>\n Brian Solis<\/a>\u2019s analysis shows females are the majority of visitors on the following sites, which he calls \u201cmatriarchys\u201d:\u00a0 Twitter, Facebook, Deli.ci.ous, Docstoc, Flickr, Myspace, Ning, Upcoming.org, uStream, Classmates.com, Bebo and Yelp.\u00a0 The one \u201cpatriarchy\u201d site he notes, where males > females:\u00a0 Digg.<\/p>\n Yes, women also rock sites like\u00a0Opentable<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Yelp<\/a>.\u00a0According to Yelp, while half of their traffic is male, the majority of contributors and ecommerce purchasers are female.\u00a0 And according to OpenTable, the majority of bookings are overwhelmingly made by females.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Likely because women drive most decisions about where to go and where to eat.<\/p>\n Perhaps none of this is surprising.\u00a0 Women are thought to be more social, more interested in relationships and connections, better at multi-tasking. \u00a0There is also anthropological research to back this up.\u00a0 Dave Morin of\u00a0Path<\/a>\u00a0introduced me to Dunbar\u2019s Number, proposed by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar. \u00a0The number is the theoretical limit of how many people with whom one can maintain stable relationships (thought to be 150).\u00a0 But Dunbar\u2019s most recent research shows there are different numbers for women than men\u2014that women are able to maintain quantitatively more relationships within every ring of closeness than men.\u00a0 Knowing that is an important factor if you want to build and stoke social network effects.\u00a0 More female users will likely help your company grow faster.<\/p>\n So, if you\u2019re at a consumer web company, how can this insight help you. \u00a0Would you like to lower your cost of customer acquisition?\u00a0 Or grow revenue faster?\u00a0 Take a look at your product, your marketing, your customer base.\u00a0 Maybe you would benefit from having a larger base of female customers.\u00a0 If so, what would you change to make your product\/service more attractive to female customers?\u00a0 Do you do enough product and user interface testing with female users?\u00a0 Have you figured out how to truly unleash the shopping and social power of women?<\/p>\n You could also take a look at your team.\u00a0 Do you have women in key positions? If you\u2019re planning on targeting female customers, I can\u2019t imagine why you wouldn\u2019t want to have great women on your team.<\/p>\n If you are already targeting female customers, have great women working in your company, and are seeing strong commerce and social network effects, congratulations.\u00a0 You are likely trying to figure out how to handle hypergrowth right now.\u00a0\u00a0Plus your office probably smells pretty good.<\/p>\n Women are the routers and amplifiers of the social web.\u00a0 And they are the rocket fuel of ecommerce. \u00a0The ongoing debate about women in tech has been missing a key insight. If you figure out how to harness the power of female customers, you can rock the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n