1:9:90 of Social Media — Truism or Fallacy?

There is a widely held belief that only a small proportion of people ‘contribute’ when it comes to Web 2.0 — from social media to collaboration. It’s something that Jakob Nielsen wrote nearly three years ago about in his post titled Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute when social media was in its infancy. It’s the notion that:

• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).

Source: Nielsen, 2006

This comes originally from Hill, Hollan, Wroblewski & McCandless’s research [1] that suggests user participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule. Nielsen goes further to examine a number of online behaviours:

Usenet [2]

• 2 million messages
• 27% of the postings were from people who posted only a single message
• Most active 3% posters contributed 25% of the messages

Causes app on Facebook [3]

• 25 million users in April 2009
• 185,000 users gave a donation, even though the application offers the ability to give to 179,000 different non-profit organisations
• Suggests 99.3% lurkers and 0.7% donation contributors

An analysis of statistics of types of online behaviour from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), however, paints a different picture [4] of Australian adults [5] who are online:

• 26% publish a blog/web page, upload music and video at least monthly
• 35% post ratings on a product, comment on blogs, contribute to a forums, edit wikis

Traditionally, these sorts of behaviours would adhere to Hill et. al.’s concept of involvement and engagement but don’t adhere to his 1:9:90 rules. Futhermore, it fails to recognise the wider range of activities and behaviours that people can now undertake in modern online Web 2.0 environments. For example:

• 16% of Australian adults who are online use RSS, vote for websites, and add tags to content, from video to photos
• 45% of Australian online adults maintain a profile on a social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn — an important aspect of allowing newcommers to online communities to understand who makes up that community, enables them to identify with those people, and determine whether or not they want to interact with them. Without this type of activity occuring it is likely that other types of online interaction with communities would not be possible (or would at least be significantly reduced)
• 63% are just spectators — those who typically read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch video, read forums and ratings — again important behaviours that encourage continued creation of content by the 1.8 million of Australians who create content. I know that without these ’spectators’ and the views I get on my own photos on Flickr as a result I may not be as motivated to contribute my content.

Proclaiming the 1:9:90 rule, therefore, without an understanding of the variety of roles, behaviours, the relationships between them, and the actual statistics, dooms us to a view of the world that social media will only be attractive to a very small proportion of citizens online. But given there are 11.2 million Australians currently online (out of 16.4m), and a whopping 8.5 million who do use social media at least monthly, I think the future is rosier than this 20 year old rule would otherwise suggest [4].

M

- – - -

1. William C. Hill, James D. Hollan, Dave Wroblewski, and Tim McCandless, 1992 “Edit wear and read wear,” Proceedings of CHI’92, the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Monterey, CA, May 3-7, 1992), pp. 3-9. 

2. Steve Whittaker, Loren Terveen, Will Hill, and Lynn Cherny, 1998: “The dynamics of mass interaction,” Proceedings of CSCW 98, the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (Seattle, WA, November 14-18, 1998), pp. 257-264.

3. Hart, K and Greenwell, M, 2009. To Nonprofits Seeking Cash, Facebook App Isn’t So Green: Though Popular, ‘Causes’ Ineffective for Fundraising. 22 Apr Online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042103786.html

4. Analysis of ABS cat no.  8146.0 and ABS cat no.3201.0

5. According to ABS definitions, adults are those 18 years and over

FOI and implications for collaborative, crowd sourced environments

I heard a story recently about a boss who was afraid to use a wiki, even inside the walls, because it didn’t fall under the strict editorial control processes normally required for their conventional paper documents or even the organisation’s intranet. Specifically, this fear came from the Freedom of Information Act.

This made me recall similar feelings of fear about FOI from an organisation who no longer recorded the audio from meetings because of fear that the tapes could be requested under FOI.

It’s always good to go to the source material when these issues and fear arise in order to determine exactly what the law says is able to be released when an FOI request comes knocking:

“Electronic documents

3.57 An agency may provide an applicant with electronic documents in response to an FOI request.

3.58 Security and privacy issues relating to information stored as metadata held within Microsoft Office documents have been identified. Usually an agency will not intend to provide access to a document with information that has been designated as ‘hidden’ (eg personal details of authors, revision history, review comments) or information that allows collaboration on writing and editing the document. Therefore, it is preferable that all Microsoft Office documents are converted into PDF format, or have their metadata cleansed using an agency approved process, prior to being sent outside the agency network.” [1]

I’m not a lawyer, but this statement suggests that only the final document and not its versions created under collaborative environments can be considered under FOI. In environments where information is constantly being updated, like in wikis, only the current version minus its discussion could therefore be requested under FOI. Moreover, an FOI request, as I understand it from the Attorney-General’s Department paper on FOI Fundamental Principles and Procedures, only pertains to either the public interest (e.g. how public money has been spent) or details about a specific person or entity (like a business) requested by that person (or business).

In further exploring this issue, I came across Mahony versus the City of Melville — a judgement on denial of an FOI request.

“Following the receipt of my preliminary view, the complainant queried whether draft versions of Document 9(b) or other documents considered by the ORC had been disclosed. However, in my opinion, only draft versions of Document 9(b), rather than other documents considered by the ORC, come within the scope of the complainant’s access application which was for performance review reports relating to the CEO’s position and the report prepared by the independent consultant “together with all notes, records of meetings and other documents prepared in relation to that report during the period of the consultancy” ” [2]

The outcome suggests that, in Mahony’s case, draft documents can be requested under FOI. So, regardless of whether a document has gone through the strict editorial control processes and was approved of a senior public servant, all the drafts could be accessed under FOI.

Interestingly, in reporting on FOI, the Commonwealth Ombudsman observed:

“The investigation also identified a more pervasive malaise in the administration of FOI: a growing culture of indifference or resentment towards the disclosure of information, ailing standards of training and development and a profound lack of understanding of or commitment to the ethos and purpose of the legislation. It appeared that, although the FOI Act had wrought some change in the culture of public administration, its goals had been imperfectly achieved. Many of the early FOI practitioners were advocates of open government, but had, over time, been replaced by staff who had grown up in a very different environment, with FOI just one of a number of competing demands on agency time and resources.”

“[Today] staff with FOI decision-making delegations were at an appropriate level but did not
always have to demonstrate that they had the requisite skills and an understanding of
the FOI Act, prior to being appointed a delegate” [3]

It’s always good to turn fear of FOI and unwanted behaviour in document creation into an assessment of risk and consider what mitigation strategies you might put in place to limit its occurrence or reduce its impact if it does happen. Obviously, editorial control in this case won’t stop someone requesting the drafts. Fortunately, though, the Public Service Code of Conduct is the foundation of mitigation for risky behaviour in the public sector and, essentially, requires that all public servants behave like adults and treat people with respect and equality. If they behave like adults then there’s nothing to fear, even if what they write (e.g. in a wiki or a blog) doesn’t go through a strictly controlled editorial process. If they don’t behave like adults then perhaps you shouldn’t have hired them in the first place?

If you’re a lawyer or law-junkie (and I know there are some of you out there who read my blog), I’d love to hear your opinion and learned thoughts on this one.

M

- – - -

1. Attorney-General’s Department, 2005. Freedom of Information Act 1982: Fundamental Principles and Procedures. Online at: http://www.pmc.gov.au/foi/docs/FOI_principles_procedures.pdf

2. Office of the Information Commissioner (W.A.), 2005. Graham David Mahony v. City of Melville. Decision and reasons for decision. Online at: http://www.foi.wa.gov.au/PDF_Decs/d0042005.pdf

3. Commonwealth Ombudsman, 2006. Scrutinising government administration of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 in Australian Government Agencies. Online at: http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/…_March2006.pdf

Social media engagement: What are Aussies doing?

I’ve blogged before about the taxonomy of social media — a simply means by which you can classify the activities or roles of people’s social media activities produced by Forrester. In previous posts, though, there’s been some questioning over exactly whether Australians are ‘engaged’ with some suggestions that a simple poll will confirm the old 1/9/90% ratios that Nielsen reported back in 2006 based on research in the 90s.

Source: Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, October 9, 2006

More recent research by Forrester, though, confirms earlier findings regarding the social media activities, including some new Australian statistics from their Nov 2008 Australian Adult Social Technographics® Report.

Source: Forrester, 2008

Specifically, Forrester reports that Australian consumers are blocking marketing messages and turning to each other for advice. Importantly, their research finds that:

• Three quarters of Australian online adults now use social technologies at least monthly
• One-quarter create their own content
• Australians are more likely to be content creators than their US counterparts
• Men are slightly more likely to use social technologies than women, but when it comes to joining social networks, the difference is negligible
• Creating content or joining social networks falls away dramatically as participants get older
• 46% of online adults in the Older Boomers and Seniors demographic, though, continue to consume some form of social media at least monthly, whether it’s watching other peoples’ videos, reading other peoples’ blogs, or looking at other people’s photos

With such a fundamental shift in how Australians use media, marketers, government, and private organisations must rethink their communications and engagement strategies. For example, to engage online women in Australia Forrester suggests, interactive marketers should focus on content and connections. As a small, developed market that makes heavy use of social technologies, Australia is the perfect launchpad for global brands adopting social marketing tactics.

Evangelists and marketers will be surprised “if they assume that social technologies are uncommon in Australia, they’ll be surprised to find they’re now mainstream. In fact, only 24% of online adults in Australia do not regularly use social technologies in some way”, reports Steven Noble of Forrester.

So, are Australians engaged? I think the statistics speak for themselves.

M