[lbo-talk] Small Group Of People Dominate Some Internet Discussions

[shag carpet bomb]

I've long argued that Clay Shirky's 80/20 rule, by which he's pointing at 
Parenti, is really more like 98/2. When someone complains to me that so few 
people reply to their blog post, I ask them how many readers they have and 
what percentage of those readers reply. If they are doing better than 2%, 
that's a good thing. I was explaining this to a marketing type at work, 
when I was asked to be a consultant on their social media strategy. She 
looked and me and said, "Wow. Yeah. I hadn't thought about that. Now we 
won't be so disappointed with participation levels. It's just like a 
marketing campaign, where a 3% response rate is a good result!" ha ha ha.

You see the same thing in civic life. You're lucky if you get 5% of your 
membership to actively engage. They'll join, they'll even pay dues, but to 
actually get them involved.... 2-5% of all active participants carry a 
group forward. That is why I've always agreed with Carrol when he tells us 
to focus on small numbers. It's really evident in any kind of organizing 
that a very very few people are the committed core, the rest just follow 
along... maybe cheering the core activists on, maybe grumbling about them 
in a corner, whatever -- until something pushes them out of their seat. 
Then, wham! Plugging away, wishing more people would get involved, you get 
a shock of your life: they had been paying attention all along, silently 
supportive (or feeling alienated) and NOW they have something to say and 
are willing to put their ass on the line to make something happen.

At 12:22 AM 6/13/2011, // ravi wrote:


>Scientific American:
>
>http://l.ravi.be/jCrn0o
>
> > Researcher Itai Himelboim gathered eight million messages posted to 35 
> political and philosophical newsgroups—like alt.politics.usa—over a 
> six-year period. And he analyzed the connections among the messages. 
> Turns out that 50 percent of all replies were directed at just 2 percent 
> of people who started threads, and who thus came to control the 
> discussion. And the larger the newsgroup, the more polarized this effect 
> became.
>
>And for some recursive value:
>
> > But these newsgroup dominators weren't posting much original content. 
> Sixty percent of their posts were just content lifted from traditional 
> news sources like the New York Times. Which is good news for the news 
> business, the author says.
>
>:-)
>
>         —ravi
>
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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