• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 20, 2011

A new study from iVillage suggests women trust women's online communities more than social networks and Web portals. More than half (51%) of women's community users said women's sites are places they trust for information about brands and products compared to only 14% who trust information on social networks. Nearly half (47%) said women's communities provide the right connections for advice on brands and products (versus 16% for social networks) and women's communities were also rated higher than social sites for relevance and value, according to the study conducted with Burke Research, based on a survey of 2,232 women online.

Of course, the findings have to be taken with a huge grain of salt since they're from a report commissioned by a women's online community. And the lower trust of social networks found in the report hasn't stopped women from flocking to Facebook, where women made up 53% of U.S. users, as of last September. And Facebook had about 151 million unique visitors in November, compared to 33 million for iVillage, according to comScore. So perhaps it's not surprising iVillage is trying to compete on perceived trust rather than audience.