In Internet culture, the 1% rule or the 90-9-1 principle reflects a theory that more people will lurk in a virtual community than will participate. This term is often used to refer to participation inequality in the context of the Internet.

Contents 1 Definition 2 Participation inequality 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Definition

The 1% rule states that the number of people who create content on the internet represents approximately 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content (e.g., For every one person who posts on a forum, there are at least ninety-nine other people viewing that forum but not posting). The term was coined by authors and bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba^[1] although there are earlier references to the same concept^[2] that did not use this name.

The actual percentage is likely to vary depending upon the subject matter. For example, if the forum requires content submissions as a condition of entry, the percentage of people who participate will probably be significantly higher than one percent but the content producers will still be a minority of users.

This can be compared with the similar rules known to information science, such as the 80/20 rule known as the Pareto principle, that 20% of a group will produce 80% of the activity, however the activity may be defined.

[edit] Participation inequality

A similar concept was introduced by Will Hill of AT&T Laboratories^[3] and later cited by Jakob Nielsen; this was the earliest known reference to the term "participation inequality" in an online context.^[4] The term regained public attention in 2006 when it was used in a strictly quantitative context within a blog entry on the topic of marketing.^[5]

[edit] See also

• Pareto principle

[edit] References

1. ^ "The 1% Rule: Charting citizen participation", Ben McConnell and Church of the Customer blog, May 3, 2006
2. ^ "Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers", Elatable : Bradley Horowitz blog, February 16, 2006
3. ^ 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.
4. ^ "Community is Dead; Long Live Mega-Collaboration", Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for August 15, 1997
5. ^ "The 1% Rule: Charting citizen participation", Ben McConnell

[edit] External links

• 90-9-1.com
• The 1% Rule: Charting citizen participation by Ben McConnell in Church of the Customer, May 3, 2006
• Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities by Jakob Nielsen, October 9, 2006.
• What is the 1% rule? by Charles Arthur in The Guardian, July 20, 2006.
• The 1% Rule by Heather Green in BusinessWeek, May 10, 2006
• Institutions vs. Collaboration by Clay Shirky, July 2005, Video at 06:00 and 12:42