** My Intellectual Flakes **

The problem of participation has been prevalent to online communication. It seems especially so for bloggers. According to Jakob Nielsen, the blogging activities follow a 90-9-1 rule:

• • 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
  • 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
  • 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions

And this participation inequality is simply part of the online community. The phenomenon will always be there.

————————————–
A report on how customers use social networks by Charlene Li showed a diagram like below. It is also pointed out that

the younger the group, the greater the level of participation. More
than a third of teenagers fall into the creators category, while people
in their 20s dominate the joiners and Gen Xers are avid spectators.
Many older people lurk in social networking sites, but “boomers and
seniors need more relevant content and services to get them engaged,