There are a couple of points that reduces the pertinency of that research, in my opinion
1.Gender figures : “We found that men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. To get this figure, we cross-referenced users’ “real names” against a database of 40,000 strongly gendered names.” Ok, but what about all those spammy twitter accounts with “feminine names”?
2.”We examined the activity of a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009″. Why not examining “real” users?…

On point #1, I would say that “Females are also more relationship oriented (nurturing gene) and have a tendency to share, connect, and interact with others.“ is the real reason, not a lifestyle issue. In personal anecdotal experience, I see that men actually generate more status messages both on FB and Twitter.

I am also not surprised about the distribution of tweets across members. It follows the usual pattern of networks, where 80% ( in this case 90%) of the value is created by 20% (in this case 10%) of the nodes. It would be interesting to see a more sophisticated analysis of tweet patterns.

The blog post below from Umair Haque on “Twitter’s Ten Rules For Radical Innovators” has some useful insights on “how Twitter fits into the social network phenomenon”. See, for instance, the distinction between neighbourhoods and networks:

“Neighborhoods beat networks. Twitter’s network effects don’t feel much like standard ones. I can subscribe to your feed, yet you don’t have to subscribe to mine — times millions. What’s going on here? Twitter realizes neighborhood effects, not just network effects: complex sets of intersecting, overlapping, mutually reinforcing network effects. Oprah’s followers are a neighborhood, and so are Ashton’s. You can benefit from joining many of these neighborhoods — not just one larger network.”

The full post is at: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/06/twitter_2.html

Thank-you all for your comments

Zack: I total agree with you; there are a lot of spam accounts on Twitter, many of which have feminine names. However, I think that the researcher(s) chose to keep spam accounts in the data set because it holistically reflects the Tweet landscape since many of those accounts are amongst the most active contributors.

Steven: Yes, the lifestyle hypothesis is a generalization of the female gender, but so are the nurturing tendencies (Gossip Guys anyone?). After all, these are only fitting stereotypes and maybe the truth is that there is no significant difference between male and female behaviours within social networks…

You’re right, Twitter’s distribution is comparable to that of other networks but it’s surprising that 90% of Wikipedia’s content is even generated by the top 15% of contributors. To me, Twitter’s microblogging 140 character format poses less barriers for entry than editing knowledge based encyclopaedia articles.

I am also on the lookout for better social media analytics, I will share the link with you if/when I find something interesting

Giulio: Very interesting read! I especially agree with “public beats private”, “Simplicity beats complexity”, and “neighbourhoods beat networks”.

Conversely, I disagree with “circuits beat channels”. I find that tweets are still prevalently broadcasts. Oprah isn’t really conversing with anyone, most of the time she’s updating us on her life or promoting her show. Here’s a recent one : “Just saw RUINED…. OMG….. EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON STAGE WAS OUTSTANDING…. Boo-hooing next to Jane Fonda had to borrow tissue.9:18 PM Jun 5th from TwitterBerry”

[...] mediasphere” has exploded over the past year (53% of women in America use it, and 45% of men use it), ranging from microblogging services such as Twitter and Tumblr, all the way up to photo sharing [...]