You can't

That is right. "You can't." Harsh words for a democratic society to adjust to but the stats tell the story.   What stats?   Jakob Nielsen publishes the Alertbox weekly with his insights on usability. This week's headline reads: Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute   His summary states: In most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. Less than 1%!   You'll need to read the full posting to get the real details. But yes, as bad as that is it gets worse.   How can it get worse?   You can not overcome participation inequality! You can't. The first step to dealing with participation inequality is to recognize that it will always be with us. It's existed in every online community and multi-user service that has ever been studied. Your only real choice here is in how you shape the inequality curve's angle. Pretty harsh. I need to re-read his message a few times. What do you think?   Technorati Tags : Jakob+Nielsen, Alertbox, users, participation, equality Powered By Qumana