SIX DEGREES OF PARTICIPATION
Tech guru Ross Mayfield has an important post “Social Technographics and a Power Law of Participation” that would be of interest to most serious bloggers. In it, Mayfield analyzes the results of a demographic study that examined the nature and degree of interactivity of participation on the Web, displayed in the visual hierarchy below:
A closer look at Mayfield’s visualization can be found here at Flickr
An excerpt:
“I still contend that a more ideal community is scale free in structure. What I wonder is if you could benchmark these levels of engagement against a power law — not just to test Forrester’s findings, but to help a given company realize — “we are under-weighted in critics!”
LOL! I agree. Try to love your critics. Even when they are dead wrong they are the ( sometimes irritating) guides toward truth.
On a personal level, I am a creator and a critic foremost, followed closely by spectator. I dip my toe in being a joiner and I am not a collector at all. I’m not sure why this is. I had a bloglines account and then a blogbridge aggregator and both fell into immediate disuse. I don’t subscribe to a single RSS feed and I’ve been told that mine malfunctions a lot. I don’t do digg or that delicious thing and I understand neither. Recently, eerie, the mistress of the group blog Aqoul indicated she kept track of about 240 blogs(!). My hat is off to her, I can’t muster that kind of interest.
How about you ?
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:17 pm
critics: there’s a Proverb about wise men listening to critics and how someone who tells you your fault and helps you correct it is a better friend than ‘he’ who tells you how awesome you are, but i forget the exact form, chapter, and verse. also, wise ‘men’ listen to criticism.
but, for my part, i have trouble listening to critics, especially if they have a bad attitude about it. much more likely to ignore them and keep doing the criticized activity for spite. not too wise of me š
i am all of those things – except inactive š
i was frightened to think how many feeds i subscribe to, but it’s not that bad: only 79. many of those are just for work. some are local news that i get the headlines for but don’t usually click through on.
May 4th, 2007 at 1:21 am
I’d say I’m a critic foremost as I most enjoy the commentary of blogposts (including my own) The exchange of ideas led me to blogging.
Second would be creator and last would be spectator.
In terms of RSS feeds, I gave GoogleReader a shot, but like Mark, quickly abandoned it. I visit blogs, media and “netzines” from my Firefox Bookmark tab. And I’ve just edged Sean in having 80 such bookmarks.
May 5th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Hi sean,
The Army appears intent on forcing all of its personnel into the “inactive” category. From what eddie writes, the Navy too.
Hi subadei
Me too. I had a mammoth number of bookmarks at work but some roaming IT elf “helpfully” wiped the slate clean.