S'pore women spending more time online

When contacted today, NetValue (Singapore) research manager Alan Choo said female Internet users spent an average of 9 hours (for Web and non-Web protocols) in April, compared with 7.6 hours in January.

On the other hand, male Internet users spent an average of 9.4 hours in April, compared with 10.2 hours in January.

Web protocol refers to purely Internet surfing, while non-Web protocols include instant messaging, online chats, online games and downloading audio video files.

The findings were based on NetValue's report titled Singapore Internet Overview, which provided information on the surfing patterns of men and women in Singapore.

According to a NetValue spokesperson, the results were based on a total panel of 4,700 Internet users here.

In a statement, NetValue (Singapore) country manager Jack Loo noted that the number of unique pages downloaded by female Internet users increased from 294.1 in January to 402.7 in April.

Also, female Internet users spent an average of 22.8 minutes each time they logged on to the Internet, compared with an average of 21.1 minutes per session for male users (see table below).

"Women represent a lucrative market for advertisers and retailers online," Optimum Media Direction (Southeast Asia) research director Florence Oong said in the statement. "Compared to the past, women now have higher spending power and are more IT savvy. The Internet is certainly an important medium to reach out to this growing audience," she added.

NetValue said the survey indicated a 55:45 percentage split in the composition of male and female Internet users respectively here in April. This represents about 462,000 male Internet users and 380,000 female users.

In January, the number of male Internet users was 424,000 (constituting 56 percent), compared with 333,000 (43 percent) female Internet users, Choo said.

In addition, women Internet users surfed the Web for an average of about 11 days in April, compared with 12 days for male Internet users.

Women Internet users in April were also relatively younger compared with their male counterparts. For instance, 43.4 percent of female users were aged 24 years and below. As for male Internet users, 34.8 percent of them were in this age group.

In terms of Net use by occupation, 36.3 percent of female users were students, compared with 27.9 percent of male students.

Choo said women surfers were more likely to be found on Web sites offering electronic cards such as bluemountain.com, passthison.com and americangreetings.com. Women were also found in instant messaging-related sites such as icq.com, Choo said. Male Internet surfers were more likely to be found on sports sites such as espn.com and soccernet.com.