We, the Audience

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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Possibly related:

• Photos 2.0 Round-​​​​up
• MySpace — Not for Kids
• The Kids are Alright