The changing face of the Creator, Contributor and Consumer

Typically when we think about audiences (certainly online audiences) we think about how there are Creators, Contributors and Consumers. Indeed recently myelf and Iain have been doing work around the various platforms, actions and activities these three groups might involve themselves in. Up until now we’ve been working with the model that these three groups break down as 1-9-90: the creators make up the 1% and these are the guys/gals actually building *stuff’*, the contributors are the 9% and will tinker with and comment on the creators *stuff* and the consumers are the 90% the passive unwashed masses that just take in *stuff*.

Interestingly we’ve been finding recently that in a lot of social media avenues this model begins to break down. The break down comes in broadly two places (continued after the jump):

The first comes when we begin to think about the changing face of the creator: as more power is given to the people to create – be it a simple blogging platform like Blogger, or a webpage tool to create your own news feed like Netvibes – we begin to see that our classic 1% is no longer 1%; its 5%, 10%  – more concievably. More people are creating and on more digital platforms. Heck email can be considered a form of social media but arguably 100% of the digital audience create emails. We have two choices then it seems: either accept that the 1-9-90 model is humped and step away from it or (and this is what i’d push) start thinking about these typical creation activities actually become contributor activities – we need to think of writing a blog as contributing to the blogosphere (for example). Thusly we need a new way to think of creators – as the people building the widgets, the portals, the add-ins that support and enhance digital media activity. Perhaps then “creator” can be replaced with “facilitator”? Hmmm…

The second point of break down comes when we begin to see that when it comes to online, the audience is very often both contributor AND consumer. For example I act as a consumer when I download a podcast from iTunes but I act as a contributor when I comment on the podcast or give it a star rating. We end up measuring the same person twice as they fulfill two different roles as consumer and contributor. And again with this shift the contributor is no longer the 9% and the consumer the 90% – its more fluid than that depending on the platform, actions and activities. Again we are left either to jettison the 1-9-90 model as being inadequate or else try and recontruct how we perceive contributors and consumers. It is here that i’m more inclined to leave behind the 1-9-90 model. Well no, not leave it behind as in the majority of cases it is still applicable and useful but we do at least need to start recognising those platforms, actions and activities in which the 1-9-90 model starts to become skewed.

It was heartening this week then when Forrester released some research in to social web usage and gave stats on the various levels on engagements between Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives. The graph (below) shows exactly what i’m getting at: that the 1-9-90 model is being eroded as social media becomes more pervasive and “mainstream”.

The 1-9-90 model looks to be shifting then and how we percieve creators contributors and consumers is changing as a direct result of the open and social web in which we now surf. Does this make the 1-9-90 model useless? Hardly, it is still relevant and applicable as a means of analysing social media activity but we must be willing to recognise when this model breaks…well, shifts. It should be a flexible starting point, not a hard and fast rule to analysing social media platforms, actions and activities.

P.S I’ve mentioned Platforms, Actions and Activities a fair amount in this post without going in to deal – my apologies but fear not gentle reader for next week I shall be building on these terms in a subsequent blog post. Stayed tuned…