Web participation

80-20 Rules online. In Web communities, there are a small number of creators, a few more synthesisers and a whole load of hangers on. Here's a round up of recent research into Web participation.




Participation in Yahoo! Groups, Elatable

As shown above, in Yahoo! Groups:
1% of the user population might start a group, or a thread within a group (creators)
10% of the user population might participate actively and actually author content whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress (synthesisers)
100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups (consumers - otherwise known as 'lurkers')

McKinsey's study points to a similar pattern of participation. It also indicates that quick, easy activities, like social bookmarking with del.icio.us, are practiced by a greater proportion of the site's users, compared to sites like Wikipedia and Flickr, which require more time and commitment to post or edit interesting content.



McKinsey's social media participation pyramid McKinsey Quarterly, August 2007


Similarly, on Wiki sites, counting only logged-in users:
10% of all users make 80% of edits
5% of users make 66% of edits
Just 2.5% of users make 50% of all edits.


Forrester research yielded the following participation ladder:




From MTV/MSN's Circuits of Cool report, the participation pyramid for global youth indicates a higher degree of involvement.
As many as 40% of youths globally are 'creators' – keep a regular blog, upload videos or photos;
19% are ‘finders’ – they will actively look for content to share with their friends;
61% are ‘contributors’ – add comments to content;
60% are ‘forwarders’ – they will share links with their friends;
80% are 'viewers' of some form of social media content.


Circuits of Cool relationship with social media



What does this mean for companies developing social media strategies?

There's clearly no point trying to get all your customers to blog or create, or even actively participate in your interactive campaign. If you put out a competition that requires time, effort and creativity, don't expect everyone to jump to it.

The upside is, you don't need to engage that many 'active' participants to get the interest of a group. The difficulty is in finding these participants in the first place. It relates to fan culture, monitoring social news and bookmaking sites and blogs like Technorati to find the Ikeahackers and other passionate denizens of the online world.

Once they do tap into Web communities, one thing that marketers might aim to do is move people up the participation pyramid, to get more highly engaged consumers (bearing in mind that not everyone wants to become more involved).

To develop effective social strategies, marketers need a deeper understanding of what motivates people to get involved in the first place.

In their article, How companies can make the most of user-generated content, McKinsey identify fame and fun as primary motivations, closely followed by the desire to share with friends and others.


McKinsey Quarterly, August 2007


The McKinsey findings are consistent with msn/MTV Circuits of Cool research, which indicates that, primarily, humourous clips and selected and uploaded by youths on to video sharing sites, for the benefit of friends, or to see what others will make of it. In addition, links from friends are the primary mode of navigation to online video clips.

Forrester research looked into how profiles differed by primary life motivation, site usage and PC ownership.