{"id":9,"date":"2009-02-06T16:37:35","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T08:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.dierschow.com\/wordpress-2.7\/wordpress\/?p=9"},"modified":"2009-05-26T07:51:24","modified_gmt":"2009-05-25T23:51:24","slug":"where-are-you-part-of-the-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/career\/where-are-you-part-of-the-1","title":{"rendered":"Where are you part of the 1%?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, usability expert Jakob Nielsen put forward what he called the 90-10-1 rule<\/a>:\u00a0 Social communities tend to be composed of 90% “lurkers”, 9% intermittent contributors, and 1% heavy contributors.\u00a0 I’ve repeatedly observed the same tendency, both in the work setting and my personal life, in groups ranging from 10 to 1000 people.<\/p>\n

Don’t be quick to assume that this is a value judgment on the three levels of involvement; it’s not.\u00a0 Each group tends to get out of the community what they need, but it’s also proportional to what they contribute.<\/p>\n

But here’s the question I would challenge you with:\u00a0 For each community that you’re connected to, where do you choose<\/em> to be?\u00a0 And in particular, which ones are so important that you want to be part of the 1%?<\/p>\n

Obviously, with any significant number of communities, you won’t be able to afford being a heavy contributor to each.\u00a0 And if you only<\/em> are involved with the few groups where you’re heavily invested, you’ll develop a very narrow field of interest.<\/p>\n

Most likely you have to choose.\u00a0 So it would be good to choose wisely, based on:<\/p>\n