Saturday, April 28, 2012

1% of an Internet social group are actually active?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90%E2%80%939%E2%80%931_principle

"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 (for example, for every person who posts on a forum, generally about 99 other people are viewing that forum but not posting). The term was coined by authors and bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba,[2] although earlier references to the same concept[3] did not use this name. For example, a large 2005 study of radical Jihadist forums by Akil N Awan found 87% of users had never posted on the forums, 13% had posted at least once, 5% had posted 50 or more times, and only 1% had posted 500 or more times.[4]"

Would this rule apply to Anonymous when they started going after Scientology in 2008?  I have one little tidbit that might show percentages there.  I wrote "We Are Legion" about the Anonymous movement.  When I posted it online, I was completely baffled by the counter I had on the page, which was showing 12,000 visitors or so per day!  Where did all these viewers come from?  The actual count of the first physical Anonymous worldwide protest was about 8000 people.  So who were all these people interested in my reasonably obscure article?  Well, perhaps they are the 99% of Anonymous who are mostly passive.

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