Barabási writes about Pareto’s 80/20 rule: that 80% of something is likely to come down to 20% of another. An example given is that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by only 20% of the population. More recently, this Law or Principle has been turned into Murphy’s law of management: one of these being that 80% of profits are produced by 20% of the employees.
This made me think about user-generated web content, and whether this rule is true for how many users actually contribute and create it. After doing a quick google search, I came across the 1% rule. This states that only 1% of users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% only “lurk” (or browse).
What does that mean for me as a future media maker? It means there is so much content yet to be created, and opportunities for me to create it.
