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According to the the Forrester Research Social Technographics report, social technology, or web 2.0, behaviors can be categorized into a ladder with six levels of participation (via ZDNet) -

- Creators (13%): Publish web pages or blogs, upload videos to video sharing sites.
- Critics (19%): Comment on blogs, post ratings and reviews.
- Collectors (15%): Use RSS, tag Web pages.
- Joiners (19%): Use social networking sites.
- Spectators (23%): Read blogs, watch peer-generated video, listen to podcasts.
- Inactives (52%): None of these activities.

The percentages don’t add up to 100% because, apart from the inactives, the other five levels of participation overlap with each other.

Forrester recommends that instead of looking at Web 2.0 as a list of technologies to be deployed on an ad hoc basis, marketers should first analyze where their customers are on the Social Technographics ladder and then create a Web 2.0 strategy to transition them to the next step.

Here are my top of the mind thoughts on the Social Technographics report -

- If such a survey were to be conducted in SEC A/B+ households in India, I think that more than 80% of the respondents would have been inactives. Even for the US, the 52% figure looks very low and I suspect that the sample is skewed in some way. However, even though the percentage of active Web 2.0 participants might be low, it is important to tap into them because they are likely to act as influencers for the inactives.

- Of the respondents who participate in Web 2.0 in some form, only one-fourth actually create something. This can be interpreted in two ways. It can mean that the number of creators can potentially increase four times, even if new people are not exposed to Web 2.0 at all. If this is your interpretation - and it is mine - then the assertion that blogging has plateaued does not hold much weight and the potential number of active blogs is closer to 60 million than 15 million. Alternatively, it can mean that the size of active Web 2.0 participants is about 60 million.

- The Social Technographics distribution of consumers in various geographical and product markets, and for consumers of different brands in the same market, will be different. For example, Forrestor reports that the percentage of inactives amongst Apple and Dell users is ~35% and ~60% respectively. Therefore, what works for one brand in one market may not work for another brand in another market.

By the way, which type of active Web 2.0 are you, and, if you are not a creator, what’s stopping you from becoming one?