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Study: App.net, Medium, and Svbtle users are overwhelmingly white and male

Study: App.net, Medium, and Svbtle users are overwhelmingly white and male

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A user-study by BuzzFeed of new services app.net, Medium, and Svbtle finds them to be overwhelmingly white and male

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BuzzFeed FWD chart
BuzzFeed FWD chart

Silicon Valley isn't known for diversity, so it's perhaps not terrifically surprising to find that many of its newest, most hyped products, such as App.net, Medium, and Svbtle, are also populated at the early adopter phase by a high proportion of white men. And yes, that is exactly what the numbers, just run by Buzzfeed FWD, have found: and they are even starker than you'd probably imagine. For instance, they've found that 88 percent of the current users of App.net are both white and male, and overall, it's more than 94 percent male. The other services looked at — Medium and Svbtle — don't fare much better, though Medium, as the youngest and smallest sample, is the most diverse, at 61 percent white.

There is a lot that's interesting in the findings about early adopters here, but it's the degree, not necessarily the phenomenon itself which is surprising to those familiar with the demographics of Silicon Valley. It's also interesting to note that the sample sizes — active, discovered users of these services — are terrifically small: less than 1,000 users of App.net were identified, for example. So, while these early adopters are an extremely homogenous group, it's also important to note that they are also a very, very small slice of the internet. As services grow in popularity, their demographics thankfully diversify.