How far people engage online

Ross Mayfield in Social Technographics and a Power Law of Participation gives us ways of looking at how far people engage on the web that go beyond the "one percent contribute, ten per cent may comment" rule of thumb.
First Ross offered us a Power Law of Participation that graphs involvement from low to high;

Social software brings groups together to discover and create value.  The problem is, users only have so much time for social software.  The vast majority of users with not have a high level of engagement with a given group, and most tend to be free riders upon community value.  But patterns have emerged where low threshold participation amounts to collective intelligence and high engagement provides a different form of collaborative intelligence.

Ross then reports that Charlene Li at Forrester has produced a report on Social Technographics that surveyed user engagement.

How the profiles vary by age is interesting, says Ross, who has read the report:

Teenagers create more than any other generation. Youth between 12 and 17 years old are avid  users of Social Computing technologies, with more than one-third engaging as Creators. But  this is a fairly self-centered age group — while very likely to create their own content, they are  less likely than Gen Yers to be Critics and Collectors...
Joiners dominate Gen Yers. While this age group has higher percentages in each category than  every other age group (except for youth Creators), it’s their sky-high participation in social  networks that stands out. In fact, there are slightly more Joiners than Spectators — meaning  that Gen Yers are less likely to passively read, watch, or listen to social media, even when it’s created by their peers...
Gen X Spectators form the foundation for future participation. While significantly fewer  members of Gen X are at the top of the participation ladder, that four out of 10 are already  using social media as Spectators means that they are well positioned to take the next step...

Also note that Creators self-identify themselves as leaders (38% say "I am a natural leader") than any other group, and those who participate in social software are greater influencers (Active categories range from 52-56% saying "I often tell my friends about products that interest me, compared to 33% for Inactives).

Thirdly, Ross gives us Phil Wolff's remix.

 
Someone commenting on Ross's blog says he believes that the participation ladder ignores email. It also ignores other ways that people may be interacting, including by phone. The analysis - useful as it is - is web-centric rather than people-centric. What I would find interesting is analysis of any group, network, community in terms of the different communication styles. If you are loquacious on the phone or face-to-face, will you be more or less so online? How far does it depend on the situation, and how far on the individual?  Some people will send an e-mail when they could walk down the corridor for a chat.

Comments

[Jeremy Gould]

Good roundup David. Been meaning to throw you this link to an podcast interview that Niall Kennedy conducted with Charlene Li. But I have been a touch busy the past few days...

Worth a listen: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2007/04/social-media-trends-podcast.html

[Alice]

Very interesting scale of engagement- what is a 'Refactor' though? Thought of this way of looking at levels of online engagement when at the Channel 4 education conference yesterday-
sounds like we're all 'tourists' in the world of the 'natives'(kids born after the birth of the web)- am feeling suddenly out of date!

I blogged the conference with a participation slant here:
http://www.involve.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=main.viewBlogEntry&intMTEntryID=3091

Ewan McIntosh did a far more eloquent job of explaining what went on here: http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/ (and his has pictures too!) :)

I think that a scale like this is v.useful for grappling with ever more complex layers of engagement in a simple graphic way. Would be interested in developing one specifically for children and young peopl eonline.