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, 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..” 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#

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 and making jewelry, to more modern activities like writing books, building cars, reporting on news, and making movies.