Lurkers

In the world of online social networks and forums, a “lurker” is someone who consumes posted content, but doesn’t typically share anything of their own.

Some lurkers are still learning the social conventions of the space in which they’re lurking and will eventually share posts, images, and comments of their own, while others simply prefer to consume rather than produce in a given social forum.

Whatever the specifics (and they vary based on the platform in question), lurkers are at the far end the participation spectrum, and power-users are at the other; the latter being people who produce a whole lot of content, posting and sharing and commenting and liking and in every other possible way making themselves and their opinions and their work known to others in the community.

A recent field experiment attempted to determine how users of Reddit self-select into lurker or power-user categories, and what might be done to adjust users’ level of participation so that more people participate, and less of the conversation is dominated by just a few power-users.