1% rule (Internet culture)

In Internet culture, the 1% rule or the 90–9–1 principle (sometimes also presented as 89:10:1 ratio)[1] reflects a theory that more people will lurk in a virtual community than will participate. This term is often used to refer to participation inequality in the context of the Internet.

Contents

Definition

The 1% rule states that the number of people who create content on the internet represents approximately 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content (for example, for every person who posts on a forum, there are generally about ninety-nine other people viewing that forum but not posting). The term was coined by authors and bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba[2] although there are earlier references to the same concept[3] that did not use this name. For example, a large 2005 study of radical Jihadist forums by Akil N Awan found that 87% of users had never posted on the forums, 13% had posted at least once, 5% had posted 50 or more times, and only 1% had posted 500 or more times.[4]

The "90–9–1" version of this rule states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.

The actual percentage is likely to vary depending upon the subject matter. For example, if a forum requires content submissions as a condition of entry, the percentage of people who participate will probably mostly be significantly higher than one percent but the content producers will still be a minority of users. This is validated in a study conducted by Michael Wu, who uses economics techniques to analyze the participation inequality across hundreds of communities segmented by industry, audience type, and community focus.[5]

This can be compared with the similar rules known to information science, such as the 80/20 rule known as the Pareto principle, that 20% of a group will produce 80% of the activity, however the activity may be defined.

Participation inequality

A similar concept was introduced by Will Hill of AT&T Laboratories[6] and later cited by Jakob Nielsen; this was the earliest known reference to the term "participation inequality" in an online context.[7] The term regained public attention in 2006 when it was used in a strictly quantitative context within a blog entry on the topic of marketing.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ What is the 1% rule? by Charles Arthur, The Guardian, Thursday 20 July 2006
  2. ^ a b McConnell, Ben; Huba, Jackie (May 3, 2006). "The 1% Rule: Charting citizen participation". Church of the Customer Blog. http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/blog/2006/05/charting_wiki_p.html. Retrieved 2010-07-10. 
  3. ^ Horowitz, Bradley (February 16, 2006). "Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers". Elatable. Blogger. http://blog.elatable.com/2006/02/creators-synthesizers-and-consumers.html. Retrieved 2010-07-10. 
  4. ^ Awan, A. N. (2007b) 'Virtual Jihadist media: Function, legitimacy, and radicalising efficacy', in European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 10(3), pp. 389–408.
  5. ^ Wu, Michael (04-01-2010). "The Economics of 90–9–1: The Gini Coefficient (with Cross Sectional Analyses)". Lithosphere Community. Lithium Technologies, Inc.. http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Building-Community-the-Platform/bg-p/MikeW/label-name/90-9-1. Retrieved 2010-07-10. 
  6. ^ Hill, William C.; Hollan, James D.; Wroblewski, Dave; McCandless, Tim (1992). "Edit wear and read wear". Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (ACM): 3–9. doi:10.1145/142750.142751. ISBN 0897915135. 
  7. ^ "Community is Dead; Long Live Mega-Collaboration", Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for August 15, 1997

External links