Among the companies that have tried to work with communities online, many have found that they conversation is dominated by extreme enthusiasts rather than average users, and have concluded that online community is a distraction from their real customers.
That turns out to be a very dangerous mistake.
Rubicon Consulting’s web practice team recently conducted a broad survey of US web users to understand better how people in the US use the web, with a special focus on web community and its effect on consumers. Key findings of that survey, and its implications for companies, include:
It’s true, enthusiasts do dominate online conversations
Most web users are consumers of information, not creators. About 80% of the user-generated content on the web, including comments and questions, is created by less than 10% of web users, a group we refer to as the most frequent contributors (MFCs).
User reviews drive product purchases
But despite the low content creation rates, online communities have enormous influence on almost all web users. Online comments and reviews posted by the enthusiasts are second only to word of mouth as a purchase driver for all web users. Those personal reviews are far more influential than official reviews posted by a website or magazine, or information posted online by a manufacturer.
This means the old idea of “influencers” is confirmed and explained. The most frequent contributors are the influencers, and they have a strong influence on purchase decisions because they write most of the online recommendations and reviews.
Web discussion is theatre
These findings mean online community matters enormously to companies, but not in the way that most of them expect. Online discussion is a poor way to communicate with the average customer, because average customers don’t participate. But it is a great way to communicate to them, because average customers watch and listen.
Most content and discussion sites should be viewed as performances, in which the site’s organizers interact with a relatively small number of users in order to educate, persuade, or entertain everyone else. This means it is critical that companies understand who the MFCs are, and how to take care of them, because they are the companies’ fellow actors in the online performance.
MFCs are different from the average web user. They’re more ethnically diverse; more technically skilled; more likely to be single; more likely to work in technology, entertainment, or communication companies; and more likely to be Democrats. But most of all, they are younger than typical web users. Half of the web’s most frequent contributors are under age 22.
Other insights: Leading websites, and the web’s impact on social lives
The survey also explored general use of web community, and its impact on users’ lives. Some of the most interesting insights include:
Search is the leading web category, but what comes after that?
It depends on how you ask the question. If you look at sites generating the most daily traffic, the most intensely used site categories after search are:
- Social networking (such as Facebook and MySpace),
- General news sites (such as CNN.com and NYTimes.com), and
- Online banking.
If you look at breadth of visitors (in other words, which sites are eventually visited by the largest percent of web users), the leaders after search are:
- Mapping (MapQuest and others),
- Retail (Amazon.com and others), and
- Reference (including Wikipedia).
Either way, community sites are in the top four web destinations.
Yahoo is the second most valued website. A good way to measure the value of a website is to ask users if they would pay a monthly fee to get access to it. By this measure, Google is the site web users value most, as expected. But Yahoo stood out as the clear number two. It was followed by three leading community-driven sites: YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook. The press coverage of Yahoo’s financial challenges sometimes obscures the size and loyalty of its user base.
Site valuation differs a lot by age. Among web users over 30, Google and Yahoo are still the top two, but they are followed by eBay and MapQuest.
Other key findings about site usage:
Facebook appears to be ahead of MySpace in terms of number of people who have profiles, and the value people assign to the site.
ESPN.com and CNN.com are both more valued than NYTimes.com, but all three are eclipsed by community-based Wikipedia.
The web has a big impact on social lives, but mostly for young people
Who’s #3 in social sites? Most people know that Facebook and MySpace are the leading social networking sites in the US, but the strong #3 in registrations is Classmates.com, followed distantly by LinkedIn. Those two sites have many more adult users than teens.
Twitter and SecondLife serve niches. Although both Twitter and SecondLife have received enormous amounts of press coverage, and are used intensely by some people, they are dwarfed in membership by the major social sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and even LinkedIn.
Social sites are much more satisfying to teens than adults. Although many adults have joined MySpace and Facebook, those sites are much less effective and satisfying for users over 21. Adults say they make fewer friends through social sites, and say the sites play a less important role in their social lives.
Adults and teens use their social networks differently. Most adults will approve someone as a friend on a social site only if they already know them. Many teens will approve someone as a friend as long as they have even a vague idea of who they are. This means the two groups use the friends list in different ways. To adults, the friends list confirms relationships that they already have elsewhere. To teens, the friends list is an entry point for a relationship.
Despite differences over the social sites, the web as a whole has a significant impact on the social lives of many users. For example, about 24% of web users say they have dated someone they first met online. In the 22-30 age group, that percentage rises to 37%. Many of those meetings are happening outside of dating websites, as only 9% of web users said they visit dating websites at least once a month.
Web activity is more important to Democrats than Republicans. Web users who identify with the Democratic Party were more active on community websites and said they were more likely to be influenced in their voting decisions by online information. In part this may be due to age — young people in the survey were much more active online, and were also more likely to identify with the Democratic Party.
Online communities are not created equal
Although many observers speak of web community as if it’s a single thing, in reality different types of web community have very different dynamics and user bases. Approaches that work well in one type of community may fail utterly in another. That means companies looking to found community sites, or partner with them, need to understand what kind of community they are engaging with.
Based on the research on this report and our other experience in the industry, Rubicon has developed a taxonomy of web communities that classifies them into five broad categories:
- Proximity, where users share a geographic location (Craigslist is an example);
- Purpose, where they share a common task (eBay, Wikipedia);
- Passion, where they share a common interest (YouTube, Dogster);
- Practice, where they share a common career or field of business (many online professional groups fall in this category); and
- Providence, where they discover connections with others (Facebook).
More information to come
This report is the first in a series on the status of the web and use of online community. The dynamics and requirements of the different forms of community will be covered in much more detail in upcoming publications. For more information on Rubicon’s web strategy practice, and the other information and presentations in the series, please see the contact details at the end of this report.
www.rubiconconsulting.com/insight/winmarkets/michael_mace/2008/10/online-communities-and-their-i-1.html