I want to be a 1 Percenter

In our textbook "Citizen Marketers" by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, the second chapter introduces the idea of the 1% rule. Simply stating that "about 1 percent of the total number of visitors to a democratized forum will create content for it or contribute content to it." From the legendary tale of the 1 Percenters that arose from a motorcycling magazine about mayhem that broke out during an annual motorcyle race in Hollister, California, the authors use the 1 Percenters as an analogy to descride citizen marketers.

I never thought about contributing to sites like Wikipedia or Yahoo Groups even though I might use, see, or hear about them everyday. The authors bring up interesting numbers from their research of this 1% rule, such as in June 2005, 7.4 million visitors of Wikipedia had the opportunity to add to the site's content but out of those millions only 68, 682 people did. This is a whopping .9 percent that has been pretty consistent since the start of Wikipedia. Similar numbers for other online communities like QuickBooks Community, Channel 9, Discovery Education, and Yahoo Groups were presented. It's interesting to see that even when people are given the egalitarian opportunity to create something for the world to see, few take advantage. Our book describes these people as sharing many characteristics with citizen marketers. David Megegan, Boston Globe reporter, says they are "higly educated, intellectually curious, sociable, interested in many things and in finding new interests." I don't know about you but I'd like to be associated with that group, and I plan to come up with something to submit to Wikipedia in the future.