Wednesday, May 9, 2007

How many are taking part in the Web 2.0?

A survey by PEW has fired up a heated discussion about how many actually take active part in the "new" web, meaning not only passively reading, but actively contributing. According to the survey 49% of the US population has little or no interest in Web 2.0. The survey finds that 31% are "Elite users", with another 20% being "Middle of the road tech users".

Some commentators says the numbers are disappointingly low, but personally I tend to agree with Jakob Nielsen who find the numbers exaggerated: "It’s overstating this survey to say that “almost 40 per cent of people blog, upload photos, post comments and so on.” What the survey found was that 37% said that they had (at least) once done one of these things."

The 1/9/90 rule of thumb has been floating around the web for quite a while, saying 90% read, 9% comment and rate, while only 1% actively participate. Quite a few doubt its validity.Forrester has a different perspetive on this, you can read a summary of their views here. They argue that the participation rate depends on the type of site; Active participation is higher on sites like MySpace than on sites like YouTube, rather obvious in my opinion.

So what is the situation in ABB? It would be interesting to know, if we could find out. My guess would be that we have an abnormal distribution with many at either end of the scale; Many tech savvy users in one end and in the other end far too many who still insist their assistant prints out their e-mail so they can read them...

3 comments:

Oscar Frykholm said...

It sounds scary, but how about making ABB switch to mac?

"Mac users are almost twice as likely to generate content on the web as Dell users..."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070502-the-social-technography-of-web-2-0.html

Stein-Ivar said...

Isn't that like saying since drivers wearing a hat tends to drive slower than the rest, then let's demand everyone wear hat while driving so traffic will slow down? I think Mac users are different from the average PC users, that's why they have a Mac and that's why the are more likely to create content.

Unknown said...

I think we suffer from a lack of active involvement in many areas. Hence, I believe the 1% according to your rule of thumb might be even optimistic! However, Web 2.0 probably will change this. If it will be actually easy to contribute, then ABB people will find a way to speak up. If we manage to launch user generated platforms on inside.abb we will see an effect. But these platforms MUST be related to the employee's job (role). Just to try out a new way of communicating won't work. So I'd like to encourage you to implement such a platform, maybe this blog is the first good example!