A report in the recent McKinsey Quarterly highlights some rather interesting figures for believers in social media. You’ll recall the one percent rule – that only 1% of the visitors to social media sites actually contribute original content, and only 10% contribute anything whatsoever.
According to research conducted across a number of projects, one percent is a lot lower than the truth, though these figures vary quite considerably depending on the nature of the site, as you’d expect:
What does this graph mean? It means that on flickr, for example, 95% of the photos are uploaded by 2% of the users. On del.icio.us, that figure rises to 62% of the content being created by 10% of the users (NB: www.delicious.com works equally well, fellow mis-spellers). A site that was very participative would be in the right side of the graph. One that was more inclined towards the creation of content by the few and consumed by the many would be in the top left. Since the horizontal scale only goes up to 12%, and the highest-scoring sites only get 10%, it suggests that for all these sites, the idea of co-creation between all the members of those communities is a myth.
Good. If I go onto flickr to look at photos, then I don’t want to be assailed by holiday snaps or stag-do’s. I want to see work created by people who are passionate about and very good at photography. The sort of people who carry around a camera all the time, and upload dozens a week. The trouble is that the leading photographers are self-appointed, but it appears to be the case that on flickr, the people with the passion and commitment to contribute on a very regular basis also happen to be quite talented.
There’s also another point to be made about volume. I use flickr a bit: but I only take about 50 photos a year, though, so I’m most certainly not part of that 2%. However, I would consider myself a contributing flickr user – the graph sort of suggests that you have to be in the 2% to count. And I don’t think you do. If I produced one article for Wikipedia, then I wouldn’t be part of the 2.2% shown as the data point on the graph, but I’d still be a Wikipedia contributor. Volume isn’t the same thing as engagement or identification with a site or service.
So this one percent rule. It’s more or less true, if you’ll allow that the difference between 1% and 10% is fairly academic. But the thing is that it’s not actually as important as it seems at first sight. If the one percent suddenly left to go to a different site, then the 99th percentile would simply become the new one percent. They’re all using the sites, with a long-tail decline in most cases when it comes to the volume of their contributions. Where a developer or publisher makes their money would determine where they put their effort. If they charge for publishing, like flickr, then making it easier/faster/better for those people, the two percent, to upload and work with their photos would be important. On an advertising model, keeping the other 98% percent coming back would be more important: that might actually entail making sure the two percent are happy and contributing away, of course.
The other thing is that the one percenters are changing all the time. Good blog entries with original thought that appeals to my tastes and interests probably account for about 10% of whatever is in my feedreader at any one time. Unfortunately, it’s never the same 10%, so I can’t just unsubscribe from the crap blogs. The likes of digg and delicious and other media aggregators can do a rough job of separating the wheat from the chaff, but because ‘the average digg user’ has different tastes to me, it doesn’t really work. Other apps such as thoof, particls and rootly claim to be able to edit the news depending on what you actually read, but they haven’t won my trust not to miss really interesting items – often, an item is really interesting because it’s unlike everything else you’ve read recently.
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You mention sites like Thoof not gaining your trust because they only show you what you read. We’re well aware of that, which is why what Thoof shows you is a mix of what you’ve shown you like, and what is interesting even if you haven’t seen things like it yet.
It doesn’t have to be either/or.
Thanks for the comment, Scott. But surely, that would involve some sort of editorial judgement if you’re to find interesting things that I haven’t shown an interest in? In which case, how do you know what that is?
Not at all, we merely measure the interest in all articles, and show you things that are “highly interesting” to people as a whole, regardless of your particular topic interests. Note that the way we measure interesting is also independent of the number of readers, so you don’t get a “Digg effect” of the masses boosting a story.
“People as a whole” feels equivalent to the (utterly lame IMHO) techmeme effect where dozens of bloggers add their own (worthless) comment to the topic du jour. I don’t want the topic du jour – I want the really interesting “fact-et” that no-one else has latched onto.
BTW, full respect for what you’re doing. Finding that random factet takes me hours and you guys can make it automated for most. But I don’t trust you to find the thing I’m looking for. Sorry :)
Thats only true if you’re measuring the number of people as a whole. If you measure out of everyone who sees a story, how many found it interesting, and use that as a ratio, you’re measuring interest, not popularity. Its *popularity* that causes a “topic du jour” effect.
I’ll get back to thoof asap and check it again.
Thanks for your contribution, Scott.
[...] page 38: I added a bullet point that contains a link to an article about on aspect of the “1% rule” — i.e., that 2% of Wiki users generate 60% of it [...]