16.4. Power Users and Lurkers#

When looking at who contributes in crowdsourcing systems, or with social media in generally, we almost always find that we can split the users into a small group of power users who do the majority of the contributions, and a very large group of lurkers who contribute little to nothing. For example, Nearly All of Wikipedia Is Written By Just 1 Percent of Its Editors [p33], and on StackOverflow “A 2013 study has found that 75% of users only ask one question, 65% only answer one question, and only 8% of users answer more than 5 questions.” [p34]. We see the same phenomenon on Twitter:

A chart titled "A large majority of tweets come from a small minority of tweeters." A bar chart shows that for U.S. users, the top 10% of tweeters post 80% of tweets, and the bottom 90% of tweeters post 20% of tweets.

Fig. 16.3 Summary of Twitter use by Pew Research Center [p35]#

This small percentage of people doing most of the work in some areas is not a new phenomenon. In many aspects of our lives, some tasks have been done by a small group of people with specialization or resources. Their work is then shared with others. This goes back many thousands of years with activities such as collecting obsidian [p36] and making jewelry, to more modern activities like writing books, building cars, reporting on news, and making movies.