Don't Count on User-Generated Content

One manifestation of the culture of participation is "user-generated content", the idea that a site's users will contribute content that makes the site increasingly valuable to a target community. But the truth of the matter is embodied in something called the 99:9:1 rule:

99% of visitors never contribute (traditional "audience" behavior),
9% contribute a little,
and 1% contribute most of the content.

Jakob Neilsen cites a number a number of examples in his discussion of "participation inequality." For example, he says that contributors to Wikipedia - the poster child of Web 2.0 participation - actually break down to 99.8:0.2:0.003!

The bottom line for organizations counting on stakeholder communities to give them a compelling web presence on the cheap is that they need to rethink the plan. Your community site may sustain itself eventually, but investing in a steady stream of attractive content at launch will jump start things a lot faster.