Do Twitter users have a gender bias?
It's an interesting question for a fast-moving network like Twitter, where gender issues surface frequently but where identity is often only dictated by a thumbnail-size avatar.
British writer and activist Joan Smith and the Swedish organization Crossing Borders have partnered on Twee-Q, a service that looks back through your last 100 tweets to identify your ratio of male-to-female retweets.
Twee-Q checks the names and genders of those retweeted against a database that includes the Swedish SCB and the 2010 U.S Census 2010. A perfect score is 10, which means an equal male/female retweet distribution.
The data is far from perfect, and the sample size is probably too small for Twitter power users — i.e., those likely to have larger followings and more activity. Of course, Twee-Q won't tell you if you're actually sexist, but it will force you to ask yourself a new question: Why do you share so many posts from men? Or from women?
According to Twee-Q's data, the conversation may be quite skewed. So far, nearly 28,000 people have had their tweets analyzed, with the average Twee-Q score hovering around 4.9. The total male-to-female tweet distribution is about 2:1 (1,012,559 male/571,404 female).
Try it out for yourself at Twee-Q. Hopefully you can beat my abysmal score of 1.6.