Online Participation Inequality

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

Source: “90-9-1″ Rule for Participation Inequality: Lurker vs. Contributors in Internet Communities

All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don’t participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background.