The 1% Rule

This follows from a point that was noted quite a few times during the Webvisions conference. Anecdote cites a Guardian article about the statistics of user activity and generated content on a website. The idea is that only 1% of website users will actually generate content. That content generation can be commenting, posting a story, etc. 10% might interact with the website in some way. This might include digging a story on digg, or rating a story on a news site, or something else which require minimal effort or exposure. The other 89% are just passive users. They simply consume the content on a website.

The article talks about the disproportionate number of Wikipedia articles written by a small number of users, and small amounts of video uploads compared to downloads on YouTube. One additional factoid in support of this, not mentioned by the article, the top 100 Digg users control 56% of the HomePage content.

Mike Davidson during his Designing for Community Interaction talk at Webvisions mentioned how this should impact design. He said that while you want to encourage user participation, you must also provide something for the 89% of website visitors who are passive users.

It seems to me this also has a great effect on design of library services over the web. Many librarians are figuring out how to allow patrons to interact with content on our websites. But we shouldn’t forget that the bulk of the community is not going to generate content or even actively interact with content.

Technorati Tags: Webvisions, Social Networking, User Generated Content