from Dr. Jakob Nielsen UseIt.com:
Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute
Summary:
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
It depends, it depends, it depends… (on size and purpose mainly). Oh and he says don’t use graphics on your site, which is an old rule for the same old reason – people with slow bandwidth. I don’t know about that one – my members usually aren’t on dial-up…
EDIT: cos the long tail of blog content is catching up with me and I need to clarify stuff 2 years on…
We used to be passive – eyeballs consuming daily dinners served up to us by others. It took a few years and we slowly started creating – blogs are intensive, as are YouTube vids, podcasts and Flickr fotos. Depth of content sites started and abandoned. Today we use more distribution (facebook) and communication (Twitter, IM) tools – less intensive, more collaborative. By the way, TripAdvisor (15 million members) has a 30% – YES THIRTY PER CENT – creator ratio. 1 in 3 people return from a trip armed with fotos, videos and reviews to share back to the community. Dr Jakob Nielsen is sometimes a weather vane for an old way of thinking on other issues too. Always question ‘experts’. And strategists. Heh.
I'm running small, one-day computer based
[...] around 70 posts on the importance of engagement with your readership/community. Dr Jakob Nielsen talks about the 90:9:1 rule. 90% of people only read your blog. They read your article then think, “ah good” or [...]
Reading: @SilkCharm’s blog post on the 90-9-1 rule http://tinyurl.com/7pztlc
I’m just a lurker. (paraphrasing the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos).
yeah and I tattoo my status updates on my skin. Good ol’ Epi
I couldn’t agree more with you Laurel. The time of pure consumption is beginning to fade into memory and these days the reader/community member is more inclined to want to participate and create.
@snaglepus Twitter is not a “creator” network per se, closer to a respondent one. http://twurl.nl/nsohsb Dr Jakob Nielsen 90:9:1 rule.
RT @SilkCharm: Twitter is not a “creator” network per se, closer to a respondent one. http://bit.ly/mwOtb Dr Jakob Nielsen 90:9:1 rule
@cindyalvarez @LLiu http://twurl.nl/xubsv8 on the 90:9:1 rule & how it’s now wrong. Also, new Forrester Research shows 26% now Creators
@SilkCharm @cindyalvarez Gd pts http://twurl.nl/xubsv8 -but 90:9:1 is just rule of thumb not law.
Also, Forrester model != whole pic.
most online communities: 90% never contribute. 9% little contribute. 1% do all the action http://bit.ly/geMtW