90-9-1 Community!

As described here before [1], power laws are very potent at describing many type of phenomena. Latest principle is the 90-9-1 principle of online communities [2].

The concept is simple. In an online community, 1 percent are creators of content, 9 percent are editors of content and the remaining 90 percent are just the curious audience watching. The phenomenal thing is that this rule seems to be proportional, so that getting more creators to a site, increases the editors and the audience.


My bet is that many users act in different roles depending on the site they use, but that there is a small minority of heroes out there that generates most of the community content - and hence drives the traffic.


[1] The Vital Few or the Trivial Many?
[2] 90-9-1 Principle