Everyone is engaged; Only 1% are engaged to you though

Bubble Generation Strategy Lab have an interesting piece on The Death of 1%. While they credit this to Yahoo’s Bradley Horowitz, they explain the idea that the 1% contributor rule will die off. Their suggestion is not that 1% of people contribute it’s that people contribute to the few things they really care about.

This is a interesting idea. As the internet and the web suck in more interest groups it’s natural that their is a higher level of engagement. I think the more involved nature of Web 2.0 is good thing, but it won’t see it’s full power until it has exceed the triviality of movie reviews, etc.

This is actually a classic problem in search engine design. I learned about this stuff in college. However low you set the barrier if people come to achieve a goal you can’t get them to feed back afterwards. Some early cash machines (ATMs) gave you the money first and then your card. They quick swapped the order because people forget their cards once they have the money (their real objective).

In this case it is simple assumption that enabling a web site for ease of contribution will generate UGC, however if people have reached their goal it just won’t happen. When the Web 2.0 style finds a broader reach across web sites the level of engagement will be greater, as each person contributes to their active niche.

This won’t of course stop your web site from showing that lower engagement (let’s say 1% for the sake of argument). It’s not because users are engaged it’s because you’ve saturated the level of users that give a crap about your topic.

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