In an article at useit.com, Jakob Nielsen looks at lurkers vs. active contributing members in a forum or community.

User participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.

Nielsen gives some examples of participation inequality in social networks, review sites, blogs, etc. But he gives some good ideas for how to overcome, or at least reduce, participation inequality:

• Make it easier to contribute. The lower the overhead, the more people will jump through the hoop. For example, Netflix lets users rate movies by clicking a star rating, which is much easier than writing a natural-language review.
• Make participation a side effect. Even better, let users participate with zero effort by making their contributions a side effect of something else they’re doing. For example, Amazon’s “people who bought this book, bought these other books” recommendations are a side effect of people buying books. You don’t have to do anything special to have your book preferences entered into the system. Will Hill coined the term read wear for this type of effect: the simple activity of reading (or using) something will “wear” it down and thus leave its marks — just like a cookbook will automatically fall open to the recipe you prepare the most.
• Edit, don’t create. Let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating complete entities from scratch. Editing a template is more enticing and has a gentler learning curve than facing the horror of a blank page. In avatar-based systems like Second Life, for example, most users modify standard-issue avatars rather than create their own.
• Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants. Rewarding people for contributing will help motivate users who have lives outside the Internet, and thus will broaden your participant base. Although money is always good, you can also give contributors preferential treatment (such as discounts or advance notice of new stuff), or even just put gold stars on their profiles. But don’t give too much to the most active participants, or you’ll simply encourage them to dominate the system even more.
• Promote quality contributors. If you display all contributions equally, then people who post only when they have something important to say will be drowned out by the torrent of material from the hyperactive 1%. Instead, give extra prominence to good contributions and to contributions from people who’ve proven their value, as indicated by their reputation ranking.

Out of this list, my favorite is “Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants.” There are so many things we can do for our users as forum owners. From reputation systems, to “kudos” like I use at dreamincode.net, to free giveaways. Even things as simple as member badges or titles can encourage users to contribute and participate.

You can read the entire article here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

by Chris Kenworthy @ Ackfoo.com

Invision Power Services (IPS) announced the upcoming release of their IPB software today. IPB 2.2.0 includes several new features that community owners will find quite nice. In response to the latest friend networking trends of MySpace and similar sites, IPB 2.2.0 will include a new “Friends list” where members can manage a network of friends. Members will be able to comment on each others profiles, view member content (blog posts), write a personal bio, rate other members, and set their gender. This is a big step forward for IPB.

But, will it detract from the “forum” concept? With sites like MySpace, users have their own little worlds that don’t extend past their friend network. Members of a forum actually “belong” to the community. They can participate with the entire group and not simply their small group of friends. Will adding “friend” features encourage users to communicate in their profiles, and less in the forums? Is Web 2.0 the direction forums should be heading in or should they remain seperate, focusing on building a larger, more dedicated community of members who “belong” and are not simply someones “friend”.

More on the IPB 2.2.0 release can be found here: http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=226814

Author: Chris Kenworthy
http://www.dreamincode.net

As many of you know, I recently sold off two of my larger forums, Zelda Universe and Guitars101. Both of these forums sold at my Buy It Now price within 2 hours of listing them for sale on SitePoint. One of them sold for about 2 years revenue and the other sold for more than 3 years of the current revenue. I also recently saw a Sonic forum sell for 3-4 years revenue through SitePoint. This is very interesting to me and it should be to you as well.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I was visiting with my good friend who owns Religious Forums and we were discussing this very topic. I told him that I saw the trend clearly and that I felt other forum owners may soon begin capitalizing on this. I think people see something unique in a forum, which is a completely different animal. I think the fact there is a membership, recurring traffic, and user-generated content gives them extra value in the marketplace. To those forum admin that are considering selling their forum, don’t consider offers less than 18 months revenue if your forum is truly unique and strong.

If you haven’t yet heard, Google has released an interesting new search feature available. I had a blast playing around with this last night after learning of its debut. This may very likely provide some very useful information to forum owners as you research your genre and demographics. One thing I would have loved to see is actual search counts for the keywords, as that would have provided great data to analyze. You will definitely have to spend some time playing around with this neat tool if you haven’t already!

This is a bit of carry over fromthe article I posted yesterday about online investing. I view this as another interesting move in the online investing industry and look forward to seeing what a guy like Richard Rosenblatt, the ex-CEO of MySpace, will do with a large host and domain registrar like Enom.

A start-up headed by former MySpace.com chairman Richard Rosenblatt has bought domain registrar eNom, Inc., and is preparing a major push into domain-based advertising and commerce. Demand Media is backed by $120 million in funding from Wall Street investors and venture capital firms, and has been quietly acquiring a portfolio of more than 150,000 domains. Terms of the sale were not announced, as both firms are privately held.

The deal is likely to heighten investment interest in the domain name sector, which has been boosted by a trend trifecta - a surge in new domain registration, rising prices for resold domains and growing revenue from domain-based advertising.

eNom is the third-largest domain registrar with more than 6.4 million names under management. What is less widely known is that eNom is also the world’s fifth-largest web hosting provider as measured by active sites - hostnames that contain content and thus are likely to be developed web sites generating hosting revenue each month. eNom hosts nearly 750,000 active sites, offering shared hosting plans priced at $7.80 a month.

The deal demonstrates that Wall Street and major corporation are watching the domain business closely in search of opportunities. “Media companies and advertising networks are now recognizing the central role a domain name plays in bringing users to Internet properties,” said Paul Stahura, eNom founder and CEO, who will become president and COO of Demand Media.

Rosenblatt was previously CEO of Intermix Media, which last year sold MySpace.com to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for more than $650 million. He was also the founding investor and vice-chairman of Great Domains, as well as founder and CEO of iMALL, Inc, a publicly traded company which was sold to Excite@Home in 1999.

“There are interesting components of the domain industry that when properly put together can provide a very compelling platform for the next generation of media companies,” said Rosenblatt. “Direct navigation traffic, combined with specific proprietary content and innovative marketing will unlock an entirely new realm of Internet media. We look forward to working closely with the domain industry as we build Demand Media into a global media enterprise.”

That includes “selectively acquiring portfolios of premium domains that can be developed into niche media properties,” the company said. Demand Media will focus much of its efforts on developing domains, adding relevant content rather than displaying a full page of contextual text ads, as is the common practice on domain parking services. To control costs, the company will rely on user-generated content, and has acquired eHow Inc., which creates niche content through how-to sites that receive millions of unique visitors per month.

“For eNom’s valued network of resellers and retail customers, the acquisition represents no changes to existing relationships,” assured Stahura. “We will continue to offer domain name and related services under the eNom brand, which is one of the strongest in the domain-name business. eNom’s resellers can be confident that the company will continue to build and enhance its infrastructure, enabling eNom to offer an even more robust suite of services.” eNom said the deal could offer “new online advertising opportunities for eNom’s clients.”