Earlier this week, Sean Carton had an interesting post looking at how Twitter has “only” 200,000 active users and 1% of its “addicts” account for 34% of total traffic.
That got me thinking about how many popular services such as Digg, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are fueled by a very small group of engaged users. This thesis was hammered home by Louis Gray, who went through some Quantcast data that shows as a small group of “addicts” drive huge amounts of traffic.
The question is whether this is a good or bad thing? Is it good to have users who are so enthusiastic even though they’re only a relatively small group? Or is it a bad thing to have a small group driving so much traffic given that advertisers, for example, may be looking for a broad audience?
As Louis suggests, it’s a bit of a Catch-22 situation given small groups drive so much traffic and, as a result, can have a major impact on a service’s success or failure.
Another take is whether the success of Web 2.0 in recent years has been skewed. For all the excitement about fast-growing service, perhaps the Web hasn’t resonated as deeply as we believe. Maybe the Web has been embraced by a small minority that seem like a bigger group based on how active and loud they are.
A good example is blogs. According to Technorati, only 11% of the 112 million blogs it indexed in early-2008 had been updated within the previous two months. This suggests there are only 13 million active blogs, and let’s say 10 million active bloggers if you assume many active bloggers have more than one blog.
Maybe the Web really isn’t mainstream yet. Sure, we use it to look up directions and check e-mail but it appears that majority of people don’t use it that much.
More: For more information on who’s using Twitter, check out HubSpot’s “State of the Twittersphere” report.
Technorati Tags: web 2.0
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The 90-9-1 rule holds up pretty well:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
Hey Mark,
Expanding on your thinking… I’m not sure it’s about people not using the Web that much, but more about what they do use it for. It’s not surprising to me that very few people are publishers or are otherwise creating content; it seems logical that there will always be more searchers than creators or social connectors.
Can this be defined as a good or bad thing? If the searcher’s subjective position leads them to believe the results they’re getting are totally democratic, then I suppose it could be argued as bad. But really, we’re just going to have to go through a longish education process as people start to get this stuff – it took a while before consumers stopped taking everything published or said in mass media at face value too.
Regarding the advertisers: they are slowly starting to understand that the value is in the deeply engaged few (addicts) rather than the hordes.
In the mean time, the few with the loudest voices have a soapbox. It’s up to everyone else to sort through the clutter and try to make sense of it all.
Good points Mark.
This can be perceived as good considering this minority as the driving force for the not-so-engaged-yet’s.
Are they influencers? yes.
For whom? for each other and internet stakeholders (marketing and advertising guys basically)
Should they be taken as the only indicator? no.
The problem starts when they forget that 4/5 of the world isn’t even online yet, when they forget that only 11% of the blogs of Technorati (so, not of all blogs) are active. The problem is them perceiving this circle as the majority instead of a minority. So, thanks for the reminder.
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