The Lurker to Contributor ratio

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I picked this up courtesy of Beth Kanter’s blog, regarding a recent survey conducted in the education sector on use of Web 2.0 tools. The survey summary analysis is available under a Creative Commons license from David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007 Survey. I was particularly interested in the data on the ratio between contributors to lurkers for on-line communities, an area I’ve previously commented on (Re the “1% Rule“). The survey reveals a much higher proportion (20%) who regularly contribute to social networking sites (e.g. Flickr, YouTube etc.), which I suspect might be skewed due to the demographic (education sector plus majority of respondents under 21?). It certainly doesn’t reflect my own experience in setting up communities of practice in the public sector (local government) where it’s closer to the 1% rule.

It’s difficult to avoid making generalisations on a survey of this type, but it was also apparent that even within this survey demographic, there was a remarkable lack of knowledge about Web 2.0 social book-marking tools, looking at the high proportion of respondents who said they had never heard of del.icio.us or stumbleupon, and a strange inconsistency between the high proportion of respondents who had never heard of a wiki, and the relatively small proportion who had never heard of wikipedia. I would have thought they could have deduced some connection from the wikipedia name. Ho hum!

Download online_tool_use_surveysummary.pdf   

About Post Author

Stephen Dale

I’m a life-long learner with an insatiable curiosity about life. I love travel, good food, and good company. I’m happy to share what I know with others….even the interesting stuff! My outlook on life is pretty well captured in this quote from a book about the legend of King Arthur: “The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King So much to learn, so little time!
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