The Shame of Social Networks revealed – Lurkers and the 90-9-1 law
DIRTY SECRETS EXPOSED – WEB 2.0 - HIDES 90% LURKERS!!
The media and not a few Web sites love to trot out DATA about how less than (insert a low decimal here) % of people actually use Twitter/MySpace/Facebook/their Web Blogs on a regular basis.
Then with delight they quote -”The whole ‘social network’ fallacy of WEB 2.0 EXPOSED. by the 90 -9 -1 law”
1% drive the engine of content creation, 9% do so every so often and 90% of Social Media types just – LURK. ( The social Media equivalent of the couch potato)
Now in the REAL world – where people have REAL lives (we are told- endlessly) there is the famous 80 – 20 rule (Pareto Principle) – 20 % of the people contribute 80% of the work, 20& of the people have 80% of the wealth. 20% of your customers give you 80% of your business.
For Social Media – less than 1% do anything – so its not a trend at all. Its not involving ‘us’, its a thing of the elite. Only less than 1% are Twittering or Posting to Facebook or Blogging on a regular basis.
So you see. Social media – just isn’t making it.
(BTW Facebook is not a good example – 300 million active users – grew by 3 million unique visits in month of September 2009 – 50% log onto Facebook every day – average user has 130 ‘friends’ -and those that use mobile devices are 50% more active than non-mobile (maybe theres something about Facebook and the figure 50%?)
Now let us note the 80 20 rule by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto was created in 1906 , when he noted that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. And it is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.” 80% of your software problems will disappear if you fix 20% of the bugs etc.
However this is not 1906.
A few current wealth etc numbers: -
In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation’s wealth. A Neat 90 10 1 formula?
In 2003, the 1% with the highest salaries paid more than 34% of the nation’s federal income tax; the 10% with the highest salaries paid nearly 66% of the total income tax; the upper 50% accounted for nearly 97% of US income tax revenue, primarily because, as stated above, the bottom 40% had comparatively no wealth (less than 1%) to be taxed in the first place. A neat 1- 10 -50….or something formula.
A one percenter or 1%er is an individual that lies in top 1% of the American Tax bracket. These are the top earners in American society. It has been noted that the richest 1% of the American population owns as much as the combined wealth of the bottom 90%. Again with the 1-9-90?
The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth according to a path-breaking study released by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER). Ok a are sighting of the 2 – 50 formula
The most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken also reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. So thats….
Moving on
Social Media – and by that most people mean Blogs, Twitter, Facebook,YouTube etc is certainly and always a conversation., and certainly engages a lot of peoples attention.
But other than Facebook – most (make that almost no-one) who has a blog – blogs on any regular basis.
Very few people use Twitter/their Blogs/upload to YouTube on an ongoing basis.Why?
Because the medium is flawed? – the oldsters were right all along?
No the reason is – its work. Unpaid work. And it also requires creativity. A lot of creativity
No-one is going to suggest that 20% of the population creates all the Art.
Are they?
Its less than 1%. Because to produce ‘art’ requires talent, discipline and effort. Rare commodities in one person
And Blogging and twittering and creating ‘useful’ or at least readable ‘content’ whether its on Facebook or a Blogs or Twitter or MySpace or anywhere else is only ever going to be done by the very very few. Because most of us dont have the time or the patience or the energy – or the will.
In any given enterprise work related or artistic its always less than 1% that are the engines.
A small example: -
In my short (but fruitful) history in Network Marketing ( no matter what the pitch was) less than 1% made any significant income. And not because the ‘plan’ was unfair or skewed in any way. The plan required a lot of work, a lot of disciple and a will to keep going when everyone else didnt. So most people – didnt.
The people that drive the ‘Content’ of social media will always be around 1%.
But that doesn’t mean Social Media isn’t exploding. As Social Media moves away from being ‘a thing‘ separate from us- the society- to becoming a part of us, it becomes , well part of our daily lives. One more ‘thing’ that is us
At one time, remember? – Email was exotic. Then crazy. Then elite – now its well – email. Ubiquitous. Just another thing we do. Like brushing our teeth.
And whatever it morphs into Social Media is becoming a ‘thing’ wed o – just like email. The platform tomorrow or next week may or may not be Twitter, it may or may not be Facebook or a YouTube mashup – (it wont be MySpace) – but the concept of us interacting with us,and everything around us, no boundaries, is not going away.Ever.
The question is what are the 1% who drive the future doing right now?
If you know, put money on it.Its our future
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