The power law distribution predicts that the bulk of the work is contributed by a small fraction of the participants.
Shirky uses a parade and the number of photographs uploaded to Flickr by those who attended to illustrate his point:
Note the sharp drop-off in the number of photos between the top few contributors and most of the participants. Notice too that because of the disproportionate contributions of these few photographers, three-quarters of the photographers contributed a below average number of pictures. This pattern is general to social media… Bloggers, Wikipedia contributors, photographers, people conversing on mailing lists, and social participation in many other large scale systems all exhibit the same pattern.
And what Shirky notes as surprising, was a eureka moment for me:
The imbalance drives large social systems rather than damage them. Fewer than two percent of Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet that is enough to create a profound value for millions of users.
In relation to Jeju Life, a core group of us hold the foundations together at the top of the power law distribution. Followed by the staff writers and then further down the line to the contributors. Finally at the bottom of the curve are those who we perhaps run into on the street and pass on a piece of advice.
Each and every point is vital to maintaining the system.
Later today I’ll be flying off from Jeju to Osaka and beyond. See you soon.
