Sunday, June 13, 2010

Who writes YOUR blog?

I did some rough maths this morning, and discovered that 83% of my followers are women, and 75% of the blogs that I follow are written exclusively - or predominantly - by women.  I don't know if that is statistically significant or not.  Maybe there are more women christian bloggers, or maybe they are just better writers than us.  

I am not the only one to notice this trend, a friend of mine who recently featured me on his blog, mentioned  that I have "...a surprisingly large following of woman (I follow his comments ...  and am frequently struck by how popular he is)."

So in an effort to understand why I am more popular with the ladies (apart from my animal magnetism of course) I tested my blog at GenderAnalyzer.  This is a site where if you type in your blog address, it will assess whether it was written by a man or a woman.  Apparently the highly trained AI software will analyze language structure and vocabulary, and assess whether the writer is a male or female.

Would you like to know my result?

We guess http://sbreef.blogspot.com is written by a woman (57%), however it's quite gender neutral."

I guess I don't say boobies often enough, and need to swear more.  I'm not sure why it thinks my language is gender-neutral. 

My other blog, Seven's Heaven, where I talk about writing, and post occasional poems and short stories, came back 56% likely to be written by a man.  (I think I may have sworn in one of my poems, that must be it.)


So apparently my writing is rather gender neutral, and slightly more female than male.

On an interesting side note, the daily devotional blog I set up exclusively for lent this year - FISH for Lent - came back 80% likely to be a woman.

I wonder if that is significant in any way?  Does talking about religion, or feelings, make my language seem more female?  Or is it just co-incidence?

I know the site is far from 100% perfect, but a quick test with some of the blogs I follow showed a fair amout of accuracy in the results. 

How does your site weigh up?  Test it out, and come back and tell me.  I woud be interested to know.



7 comments:

  1. 52% woman. Apparently my blog is gender neutral as well. I guess I didn't discuss my MAMMOGRAM nearly enough last autumn...

    Did you check out fottsp? We have 12 females, 13 males, and God, who I'd be willing to count as male since Jesus calls Him Father, but separated here to show that either way, fottsp isn't predominantly female, right? But the gender analyzer is 72% sure fottsp is written by a woman. I'm thinking it's as accurate as the quizzes that will tell you which celebrity girlfriend would be perfect for you.

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  2. Actually Helen that sounds about right. Until a year ago, fottsp was predominantly female writers, and even now I think you ladies post about 3 out of 4 posts. So those figures are probably fairly accurate.

    And for the record, Keira will be returning my call soon. She's just been busy lately.

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  3. I see your point about fottsp.

    I don't know who Keira is, but I hope she gets back to you soon.

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  4. I'm not sure if my comment is showing up or if it got lost, but I'll say it again... my blog is totally written by a woman, and now I have the numbers to prove it :).

    I read your blog because you always make me think...

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  5. Okay, this was very interesting! I once heard that women are better at language, spelling, and basically anything involving words.

    So, I half hoped mine would come back as a woman.

    But it said it was 75% male. As I sit here, drinking my black coffee, twirling my massive club in my hand, I slowly raise my fist and beat my chest... *roooooaaaarrrr*

    I'm such a manly man, ho hum.

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  6. @ Helen - Keira, because you can't beat the Brit accent.

    @ Duane - I had also heard that women's verbal skills were better than ours, but I didn't want to put ideas in their heads. :-)

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  7. DO I even need to try this thing--with all my mentions of stilettos and all?

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