Ryan Sholin » freemium http://ryansholin.com The future of news. And more. No funny stuff. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:54:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 2006-2007 ryansholin@gmail.com (Ryan Sholin) ryansholin@gmail.com (Ryan Sholin) http://www.ryansholin.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/powered_by_podpress.jpg Ryan Sholin http://ryansholin.com 144 144 Ryan Sholin on the future of newspapers, online news and journalism education. Ryan Sholin Ryan Sholin ryansholin@gmail.com no no Notes from Sergey Brin and Chris Anderson on building participatory systems to scale http://ryansholin.com/2008/11/17/notes-from-sergey-brin-and-chris-anderson-on-building-participatory-systems-to-scale/ http://ryansholin.com/2008/11/17/notes-from-sergey-brin-and-chris-anderson-on-building-participatory-systems-to-scale/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:55:45 +0000 Ryan Sholin http://ryansholin.com/2008/11/17/notes-from-sergey-brin-and-chris-anderson-on-building-participatory-systems-to-scale/ Chris Anderson takes notes on the Long Tail at a Sergey Brin talk that turns to participation and scale.  It turns out, Brin through no one would show up to populate Wikipedia with articles:

“But he was wrong, he says, because he–even he!–had underestimated the way scale can change the game. Sure, the experts say only 1% of Wikipedia’s users actually contribute to making it better. Indeed, if you do the math, it’s even worse than that: probably closer to 0.01% (today, Wikipedia has 75,000 active contributors out of 684 million visitors). But that 0.01% have created 10 million articles.”

OK, so let’s do the math: If 75,000 passionate users can create 10 million collections of facts and data, what could 75 do? How about 7?

Would it really only take seven users of a local community information database to populate it with 931 entries?  There should probably be a flattening of that curve as the scale shrinks, but keep in mind, as you build systems for a (relatively) large number of people to participate in publishing community news and information, that you can’t expect many to jump in and push the buttons.

See also: Jakob Nielsen on participation “inequality” and the 90-9-1 rule.

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]]> http://ryansholin.com/2008/11/17/notes-from-sergey-brin-and-chris-anderson-on-building-participatory-systems-to-scale/feed/ 0 The Long Tail: The time/money formula of free http://ryansholin.com/2008/08/01/the-long-tail-the-timemoney-formula-of-free/ http://ryansholin.com/2008/08/01/the-long-tail-the-timemoney-formula-of-free/#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:53:00 +0000 Ryan Sholin http://ryansholin.com/2008/08/01/the-long-tail-the-timemoney-formula-of-free/ Kids tend to have more time than money (hence P2P music sharing); adults tend to have more money than time (hence the iTunes store).

The Long Tail: The time/money formula of free

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