Message traffic on our company Yammer network is following the classic 80-20 principle, although in our case it is closer to 85-15. Some stats:
One take-away is to not judge success as having active contribution from all members — it just doesn’t happen. Most do very little contributing, a few do most of the work. In a work setting this can seem a little inequitable to many, but it is just naturally the way it evolves. And because of this it will take a while for the network to achieve a critical mass and take off. In our case the tipping point seemed to be around 160 members. The following chart nicely displays the standard power law curve.
Number of Messages per User
While I am a little surprised by these results, they do match the standard patterns of other healthy social networking sites. Which raises the question of how this quiet majority should be considered when making plans around a social networking application. For instance:
So many questions, so little time!
The 80/20 Rule or Pareto Principle and How it Affects You | Online Social Networking
Here are some Internet and social media applications of the 80-20 principle:
* 80% of all blogging is done by 20% of all bloggers
* 80% of all blog comments are made by 20% of all blog readers
* 80% of all online social networking is done by 20% of all online networkers
* 80% of all networkers flock to 20% of all social networking sites
* 80% of all traffic goes to 20% of all websites
* 80% of all spam is generated by 20% of all spammersYou can add to the list when you comment on this post — assuming of course that you’re one of the 20% of all readers.
Comments / 2 COMMENTS
RodeWorks » Blog Archive » Workplace social networking system with BuddyPress on Dec 14 09 at 5:21 am[...] collection of social networking plug-ins, be used to power it? Yammer uses has recently taken off at my workplace, and its success here is serving as a real example of the types of communication and collaboration [...]
RodeWorks » Blog Archive » Teambox — Yammer or Google Wave alternative? on Jan 21 10 at 6:09 am[...] use took off in our workplace late last year, but since everyone has returned from the Christmas break interest seems to have [...]
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