Forrester released a new report : Social Technographics® Mapping Participation In Activities Forms The Foundation Of A Social Strategy by Charlene Li with Josh Bernoff, Remy Fiorentino, Sarah Glass. From the executive summary:

Many companies approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — a blog here, a podcast there — to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for. Forrester categorizes Social Computing behaviors into a ladder with six levels of participation; we use the term Social Technographics® to describe a population according to its participation in these levels. Brands, Web sites, and any other companies pursuing social technologies should analyze their customers’ Social Technographics first and then create a social strategy based on this profile.

Forrester grouped consumers into six different categories of participation, and graphically represented as a ladder to show this, with the rungs at the higher end of the ladder indicating a higher level of participation.

Which reminds me of Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox article posted few months ago : Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute

In most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

Although participation will always be somewhat unequal, there are ways to better equalize it, including:

• Make it easier to contribute
• Make participation a side effect.
• Edit, don’t create.
• Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants.
• Promote quality contributors.

Via: Steve Rubel

Steve comments :

While extroverts get all of the attention, the thickest part of the ladder is in the vast majority of people who have no desire to participate. I imagine this number will shrink some in the years ahead, particularly as the generation that grew up with the Web enters the workforce. However, there will always be a meaty portion of the online audience that remains just that – consumers.

Does these findings also strengthen the opinion of Tom Davenport – Enterprise 2.0 Won’t Transform Organizations?