Lurkers: Resource Or Liability
by Miki Saxon
A provocative conversation this weekend on LinkedInBloggers focused on the value of ‘lurkers’ in an online community. Des Walsh discussed it here.
Des cites research by usability guru Jakob Nielsen about a phenomenon he dubbed “participation inequality“.
Essentially it comes down to this
- 90% of users are lurkers
- 9% of users contribute from time to time
- 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions
I believe this rule translates closely in the real world.
Teams in the workplace, volunteer organizations, classrooms, politics, even families demonstrate similar participation rates.
The question for you as a manager is whether this natural breakdown is detrimental to the creativity and productivity of your group and, if so, what can you do about it.
I hope you’ll leave your thoughts on this and I’ll share mine on Thursday.
Image credit: flickr
