the bbc is reporting on a survey which sez our virtual friends are as important as our f2f friends. the survey from the center for the digital future found 43% of people involved in an online community felt ‘as strongly’ about their web community as their f2f ones. btw, this is the 6th year of the survey & only surveyed americans.

other findings:

20.3% took actions at least once a year in the offline world which related to their online community

56.6% login to their community at least once a day

70.4% say they interact with others in their community (i would love to see how they defined this considering our 90/9/1 ratio and the amount of lurkers in communities)

social activism thrives in the online world. 64.9% say they are involved now in causes that were new to them when they first went online. 43.7% say they participate more now in social activism since they started participating in their online community.

more people contribute to the net. 7.4% have a blog (up form 2.3% in 2003), 23.6% post photos online, 12.5% maintain their own website.

they made an avg of 4.6 friends online & 1.6 of those online friends they have met f2f

fyi, u can order the full report for U$500 (indiv use)

a post (and experiment) on the underuse of online collaboration & conversation tools by dave pollard.

dave also has a fantastic decision tree to help you decide what technology you should use to communicate.

in the underuse article, dave asks the following questions, puts them on writely & asks for people to go there to edit/answer. he said he granted permission to 31 people but only 12 participated.

1. Why are conversation and collaboration tools so underused? Is my list of 7 reasons missing anything? Are any of the reasons predominant?
2. Is the answer making the tools better? If so, how? If not, what is the answer?
3. Given time, do you think people will eventually learn to use these tools, despite their shortcomings? Which tools, current or envisioned, will be the winners, the killer apps for online-enabled conversation and collaboration, and why?
4. What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better conversationalists, and how would we do this?
5. What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better collaborators, and how would we do this?

. personally i think tools are underused because people don’t know about them or are afraid of them or just don’t understand what the benefit could be. i think a lot of the tools could be better (and they will get better). i recently experimented with a wiki during a project at work. there were definite benefits to using it, there was resistance to using the technology, and even though i think the technology was pretty damned good, i saw definite places it could have been more user friendly .

i think several of the contributors to that post make very valid points re: generational differences. the usage of collaboration type items makes the newer generation not only more computer savvy but also willing to share (instead of the ‘i produced this’ mindset of other generations).

guy kawasaki has an interview with the authors of ‘citizen marketers: when people are the message’. they mention the 1% number that gets bandied around a lot when discussing virtual communities or any customer contribution system. basically, 1% of your users will contribute the majority of the feedback/posts/comments/content. the majority will lurk & then some will contribute every once & a while.

jakob nielsen has the 90-9-1 rule. 90% lurk, 9% sometimes contributors & the 1% that contribute the most.

having been involved in communities from a ‘owner/host’ and ‘participant’ perspective, i’d say the numbers are about right. maybe one day i’ll run the numbers on those communities i host (but probably not – more exciting stuff i’d rather do – if someone wants to do it for me….). i think these numbers also pertain to the physical world. think about the last volunteer group you were associated with – what percentage of the people do the majority of the work? and then there’s a group that does some but the biggest chunk will be the people who do realitively nothing. at least that’s been my experience in several groups. i think this is just the way things are, neither bad nor good. it does raise the question of how you get more people to become that 1%, or get new 1%-ers as some leave the group, and how to keep the other 90% or 99% feeling involved. ie the age old question of how you keep your < whatever you want to call it > alive.

there’s a quote in the citizen marketer’s interview i found interesting:

The 1 Percenters flout cultural conventions. Americans love rebels, therefore the 1 Percenters often become the influencers of American culture.

the 1% definitely influence the group (behavior, conversation topics, norms, etc) but i think the rebel idea fits into the marketing side of things (which is what their books is about) and not the community side. at least i haven’t had that experience.