week 5 summary
I’ve kind of run the gamut this week (or rather last week), from me-blog personal decompression to a bit of web silliness.
But an interesting thing happened when I decided to do a post on the phrase ‘hive mind’. It was just going to be a quick look at whether this term has generally positive or negative connotations–if it was short-hand for ‘collective intelligence’, ‘group knowledge production’ etc., or a euphamism for The Borg. As I started thinking about it more, and doing a bit of googling, I thought it could make a longer piece that drew on a few different ideas (e.g. the 1% rule and the other thing that I still can’t find anywhere about herd behaviour), maybe a few paragraphs questioning whether social media was about information or feelings, if the structure of some media was conducive to the positive hive and some to the negative, etc. But having collected a few links from different places as my thought processes progressed, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to treat this like a mini-essay; I could look at it like I had the digital artefact. Not the visual/interactive elements, of course, but (as our creative writing teachers used to say) showing, not telling. I felt like I was beginning to get an idea of what Fitzpatrick‘s post-structuralism might look like, whether multi-modal or not.
‘Summary: In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.’
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/
is this what you were looking for?
Yes, that was the ’1% rule’ I was thinking of. I’m sure I’ve also recently heard a talk about how a big majority of people only use a small minority of websites, and how this occurs in non-digital environments as well. Can’t remember where, when or who, though, which is driving me nuts
I wondered too about the other option, i.e. using a minority of websites. If I look at my own online behaviour, I tend the check the same websites, maybe a certain loyalty factor…. I am also checking different websites depending on PC or laptop, work and home…now that is weird!
Me too! Maybe that’s why the idea stuck in my head. I think I do it just so I don’t get overwhelmed by all the sites that I could be looking at!! But it’s probably more complex than that…SEOs, sites that people I know use, political/social leanings, habit, what works on laptop v. iPad v. phone…