Sue-Point-Oh!

You may have noticed that I changed the name of my blog from “the art of eating a pomegranate” to “Sue Point oh!”. I had to make the name change because I was looking at my Google Analytics and noticed that most of my Google visitors arrived by searching for “pomegranate eating” and I felt like I was being misleading. So now I’ve adopted this cheezy new title - my name does rhyme with “two” and I felt that I had the moral obligation to do it. If people start complaining of feeling sick to their stomach by the cheesiness of it all then I will find something a bit less cutesie.

Now, back to those pomegranates - November is national pomegranate month and pomegranates are all the rage right now for their health benefits. Here is a link to the instructional website I made with tips on how to open, juice, and eat a pomegranate.

No, that ‘J’ is not for “Jesus”, its for “Jacob Nielsen”.

Read what JN has to say regarding the 1:9:90 rule termed “participatory inequality”. I love that the 90% group is tagged “lurkers”!

Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs Contributers on Online Communities.

So apparently the 80:20 rule is dead (20% of your customers provide 80% of your business of some version of that).  The new ruler is the 1:9:90 rule that is specifically applicable to the new web 2.0 sites.

1% of users are actual producers (like uploading pictures to YouTube/FlickR)

9% of users are highly involved participators (tagging, commenting, creating favorites)

90% are just your good old-fashioned voyeurs who just review the content but don’t add any of their own or participate in the tagging.

I think this rule has serious implications for businesses who decide they will start a new social network system or user-created content area for their customers.  If they expect a majority of their customers to hop onboard and start adding content they will be very disappointed.

So the real question here is what motivates those 10% who are heavy contributers?  How can we get more people on board?   Is it a lack of time?  Is it the technological hurdle of using the system?  Fear or being exposed?  Lack of confidence?

What are you thoughts?