While studying for my exam in My Internet and Social Media in PR class I stumbled across the 1% rule. What is it, why does this happen; what is the demographic of the 1 percenters?
I found the answers to these question is the book Ciziten Marketers When People Are the Message by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba.
1. The 1% rule is... one percent of the total number of visitors to a democratized forum will actually create or contribute content. (McConnell)
2. Why does this happen?... "A new social system starts and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us. What matters is this: diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality." (McConnell)
3. The demographic of 1 percenters... Generally contributors are in their 20's and they are computer savvy. More men than women fit into the one percenters. (McConnell)
I think that this is really interesting. The fact that there is a very small percentage of people who create content on websites makes me wonder how objective the information is. It sounds similar to Media Ownership, Perhaps it is not as bad as corporations owning and controlling the messages that you receive through the television or radio but it does make me wonder.
Does anyone see a problem with the small percentage of contributers to the information on the internet? Does it even matter?
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This blog is for a class at St. Edward's University called Internet and Social Media in PR. It will discuss emerging social media technologies and study their application in contemporary PR practice. Topics might include: social media and Web 2.0, wikis, podcasts, social media news releases and other emerging web technologies.
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4 comments:
It's interesting how there aren't many people creating content out there in the internet, especially women. Why aren't more people speaking out? It really boggles me that the internet is endless yet only 1% of the population creates the content.
The 1% Rule is an amazing concept, and it seems to have created a new kind of celebrity, especially on Youtube. It's like a new social media elite.
Great point about how representative the information coming from the 1% is. The research from Yahoo says that another 10% of people will interact (comment, rate, etc) with that original content. So in that way, there are more voices being heard than just the original 1%.
Whatt!! The author of our book commented on my blog? :D How cool. (You can tell I'm new at this!) Thanks for the update, thats good to know!
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