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Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Interne...

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Saved by 122 people (-19 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-10-09


Public Comment

on 2006-12-01 by jlesage

more lurkers than online writers--do you need to worry about it?

on 2007-10-17 by jaydugger

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.

on 2007-10-18 by stevehargadon

Good food for thought about ways to encourage participation.

Public Sticky notes

There are about 1.1 billion Internet users, yet only 55 million users (5%) have weblogs according to Technorati. Worse, there are only 1.6 million postings per day; because some people post multiple times per day, only 0.1% of users post daily.

Highlighted by anitari

User participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

  • 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
  • 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
  • 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs.

Highlighted by tonycurzonprice

All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don't participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background. In contrast, a tiny minority of users usually accounts for a disproportionately large amount of the content and other system activity. This phenomenon of participation inequality was first studied in depth by Will Hill in the early '90s, when he worked down the hall from me at Bell Communications Research (see references below).

Highlighted by davidjennings

Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute

Highlighted by faimone

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.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

online reviews represent only a tiny minority of the people who have experiences with those products and services.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

Signal-to-noise ratio. Discussion groups drown in flames and low-quality postings, making it hard to identify the gems. Many users stop reading comments because they don't have time to wade through the swamp of postings from people with little to say.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

Make it easier to contribute.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

Make participation a side effect.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

Search engines need to rely more on behavioral data gathered across samples that better represent users, which is why they are building Internet access services.

Highlighted by madsgorm

Edit, don't create.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

Reward -- but don't over-reward -- participants. Rewarding people for contributing will help motivate users who have lives outside the Internet, and thus will broaden your participant base.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

Promote quality contributors.

Highlighted by chanelubrin

Although participation will always be somewhat unequal, there are ways to better equalize it, including:

Highlighted by madsgorm