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.

YouTube's Korean Site

Last week the NY Times reported the launch of a Korean-language interface to YouTube. The launch of local sites in Ireland and the U.K. happened last year. Plans were also made for YouTube's expansion of international reach with local language interfaces and domain names including Brazil, Japan, Italy, France, Poland, Spain and the Netherlands.

I was suprised to read that this hadn't already been done in Korea, what with its popularity and high-level of broadband Internet penetration and streaming video. It was one of the first countries in the world to have TV Networks' websites offer their full programming live and on-demand. YouTube will have competition though, with established local video sites such as Daum and Pandora TV, which has been within the top 15 sites in all Korean websites.

YouTube could follow in the mixed success of its owner Google, but the people of Google are definitely taking the neceassary steps toward success in Korea by last year building a local office in Seoul. In May, Google gave its Korean homepage a face lift with the addition of a toolbar and animated icons that act as shortcuts to site features. This is the furthest the Google homepage has changed from its simplistic design we are used to viewing.