Lurkers Need Love Too...

Me: "Hi... My name is Len and I'm a lurker."

Crowd in unison: "Hi Len... Now get out."

I am a lurker. It's in my nature to stay quiet until I have something of value to add. Of course, you then have to define what merits 'value'. Some may argue that adding an emphatic "I agree!" to the comments of a blog post is adding value. My threshold is considerably higher than that.

I recently found myself in a discussion with a group who wanted to  take a 'no lurker' approach to community. Basically no engagement = no access. The intentions behind the strategy were good - they simply wanted to drive adoption and engagement amongst their community members. There was also a notion that knowledge capital was being exploited unfairly by those who had not contributed into the system.

I fear such an approach would most likely backfire and result in the exact opposite of the desired effect...

Isn't it about sharing knowledge?

I look at our internal community EMC|ONE. It has a pretty traditional mix of consumers versus contributors. It's also become perhaps the most successful internal knowledge sharing platform within the company.

I then consider a scenario where we shut off access to the vast majority who strictly consume the information. The very value of EMC|ONE would diminish almost immediately. Knowledge would stop flowing, those who relied on the community to get answers would revert back to yesterdays methods (emails, asking peers, Helpdesk calls, etc;). It would undo much of the amazing progress that's been accomplished.

I wonder what would happen if Chris Brogan only allowed those who commented on his blog to consume the information within... Chris shares thoughts that help the community at large. His content often takes on new shapes and invokes new ideas as it syndicates through the various channels of the social web. Closing this to a 'gated community for contributors only' would be an enormous setback on so many levels. How about if Wikipedia limited access to only those who had contributed on a definition?

Success doesn't happen overnight

We also need to remember that we're on a journey. It seems that we, especially those of us SO close to the social evolution, expect immediate change. I suspect email wasn't embraced overnight. Rather there were early adopters and laggards. Some gravitated right to it while others had to become comfortable with the change. The process took time... But we're now at a point where email is mainstream and most are quite fluent using it.

Lurkers ARE your target audience

If your community is about knowledge sharing, then consumption is as big a part of your success as is contribution. And, while the majority of your audience may be lurking today, successful communities often see a steady level of conversion from consumer to contributor.

In addition, lurkers often play a tremendous role in helping drive adoption. While perhaps not comfortable yet weighing in with the pithy thought of the day, you can bet that the knowledge they're gathering from the community is often being shared through other channels... How many times have you sent someone a link to an interesting bit in a community where you yourself didn't contribute?

Love Your Lurkers

Perhaps it's time to embrace those lurkers who we so anxiously want to convert and better understand what keeps them lurking. After all, they take community knowledge and leverage it to be more productive. They often help bring new community members into the fold by sharing community content. And someday, they'll likely be adding knowledge capital to your community too. They're just doing it on THEIR schedule, not yours.

Lastly, perhaps it's time to shake off the negative mantra of lurker and call these folks what they are... consumers.

Comments

[Preston de Guise]

Hi Len,

I agree wholeheartedly that lurkers have a bad reputation. I suspect as much as anything that it comes from confusing lurkers with trolls. While most trolls are lurkers, it doesn't stand to reason that most lurkers are trolls.

I get thousands of visitors weekly to my blog, most of whom I assume read new articles and move on. By comparison, I get a very small percentage of people who post comments. By definition then, most of my readers are lurkers.

Does that make them any less valuable than those who comment? Hardly. I blog as much for the lurkers as I do for those who comment. Simply put: lurkers are people who need information - whether it's to solve an immediate problem or to discover how to do something they'll later need to do.

I'd probably go so far as to argue that "contribution only" schemes encourage intellectual elitism - allowing people to only access knowledge if they contribute some themselves is the start of a slippery slope. Further down that slope you'd see community members then start to become judged by the quality of the information they provide, and in turn denied access to information, even as a member of the community, unless they provide substantially useful information themselves rather than just any old information.

While discouraging lurkers sounds democratic, it's anything but. I've seen website forums that operate under this scheme, and within a year or so they become so inbred and insular that no new person can join, and the carping and infighting is unpleasantly intense.

All IMHO, of course.

Cheers,

Preston.

[Len Devanna]

Thanks so much for stopping by and for the comment, Preston.

I love your term 'intellectual elitism' and appreciate the experience you shared with communities who have tried this model.

Wikipedia's definition may shed some light into the source of the negativity:

"The term dates back to the mid-1980s. Bulletin board systems (BBS) were often accessed by a single phone line (frequently in someone's home), there was an expectation that all who used a bulletin board would contribute to its content by uploading files and posting comments. Lurkers were viewed negatively, and might be barred from access by the sysop, if they did not contribute anything but kept the phone line tied up for extended periods."

Likely not a term that will go away anytime soon, but I do look at these folks as information consumers - and as with any economy, consumers are absolutely key.

[Gil Vinokoor]

I agree!
(First time reader/lurker/consumer of your blog)

[Len Devanna]

There's one in every crowd, Gil. Usually it's me though ;)

Thanks for dropping by and welcome...

[Lia]

I was just about to respond to your cmmeont, then stopped and thought, It's not really my place to do so, and navigated off the page. Then I laughed at myself and came back. I can't speak for everyone, but the prevailing attitude here is that we're here for the discussion, and the discussion is at its most interesting when people bring different perspectives to it. You probably have meatspace friends you love dearly yet with whom you could not imagine having a conversation like the ones you get here. It'd be really boring if everyone was the same.For myself, and at the risk of getting too meta, I'm very much like @ in that I don't like to repeat a position that's already been stated. I'm mainly content to read and enjoy and occasionally pipe up when I feel I have something unique to contribute, even if it's only to elaborate on someone else's point. And I still remember the first time I submitted something for the Quickie and had it posted felt like I'd won a trophy. Bottom line: if you have something to say, don't be afraid to say it. And if you have nothing to say, there's no need to feel bad about that. Read and enjoy, secure in the knowledge that there are enough people here who won't shut up to keep the conversations going forever.