If you spend any time at all talking about online communities, you’re bound to stumble across the 90-9-1 Principle. The idea is simple: In social groups, some people actively participate more than others. Researcher Jakob Nielsen calls this “Participation Inequality“.
Pondering starting to think about a social website or adding interaction of this type to you site, this is a good principle to spend some time thinking about…
This looks just like my “support requirements” diagram that I have used for almost 3 decades.
At the top of the pyramid is the tiny percentage of users who get 10 support people per user.
Middle tier of 10 percent get 1 support people per user
Bottom tier of 89 percent get “another pyramid” of support people per user
1 per 10, 1 per 100, 1 per 1,000, 1 per 10,000
The 1 per 10,000 people are the folks you never hear from.