Saturday, June 22, 2002

Education sites net women

Saturday, June 22, 2002
LINDA YEUNG

Women are more drawn to education Web sites than men who tend to visit gambling and porn pages, a survey by Internet media and market research company Nielsen//NetRatings has shown.

The Polytechnic University and City University sites were among the top ten sites that attracted a higher proportion of women than men.

Of 116,500 visitors to the PolyU site in April - the period covered by the survey - 52 per cent were women. Fifty-three per cent of the 138,700 visitors to the CityU site were female.

"In Hong Kong, the sites seeing the highest proportion of female traffic are typically news, career and education, while the domains with a disproportionately high percentage of males typically have a high degree of entertainment value," said director of sales and marketing Peter Steyn. He added the percentage of women using the two university sites increased even further when considering only females aged 18 or above.

The education city Web site, www.hkedcity.net, an Education Department project for students, parents and teachers, topped the list of popular education sites. Chinese University's site was second, followed by www.hkcampus.net. City University's was in fourth place.