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Comment by seldo | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure this data is very good. The Lexington Club is marked as having 7% more male checkins. I live right next door to the Lex, and it's a lesbian bar. Women outnumber men there at least 10-to-1.

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We could've probably normalized this data better. The fact of the matter is that guys use foursquare nearly twice as much as girls do, so every venue will have dramatically more guy check-ins. A 7% male edge actually makes it one of the more female venues in the city.

Now I'm confused. Your post implies that this is a raw excess (truly 7% more men than women, which is a relative excess of women compared to the citywide average of 2 male:1 female checkin), right? But shasha...sha's post indicates that you've actually already normalized, which would imply that this is actually 7% more men than average, which is already quite male (2 male per 1 female, per shasha...sha's post).

Which is correct? Or am I misinterpreting?

sorry, it is 7% higher than sf's average. this is probably a case of Foursquare's demographic being heavily male [and heavily straight??]

Gotcha. That clears it up; thanks.

Does foursquare publish male/female ratio user base stats? Based on the people I know, it seems like only males use apps like foursquare.

It may be the "early adopter" effect. In some cases, over 95% of (self-reporting) early adopters might be male. http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/08/26/who-are-our-firef...

Anyway, here's one "female" who uses foursquare: http://twitter.com/#!/Snubs/status/26996595662 :-)

Indeed. I noticed that Hooters (between Aquatic Park & Pier 39 in SF) had 27% more women.

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