Recent Twitter reports from HubSpot and HarvardBusiness.org illustrate, again, that most social media patrons are passive readers, not active users.

The passive conclusion is neither good nor bad, but it is. Companies entering the social media space need to acknowledge the reality that very few people choose to participate and, by extension, an even smaller group become passionate users of a product or service.

Jakob Nielsen's 2006 article, "Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute," offers a great analysis of the 90-9-1 rule:

User participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs.