Interesting ripples in the social networking arena this week. Some long-time loyal Diggers are miffed over the latest change in the Digg secret sauce for promotion to the home page, interpreting it as an invitation to quit.

A couple of weeks ago, Flickr shook up their Interestingness algorithm, which angered some of Flickr’s top community members, including Kris Kros, one of my personal favorites. Here’s what he wrote:

I’m deeply disappointed with what Flickr did to my photos’ interestingness. From the hundreds, my count dropped to 15 or less …They’re using us for their own business gain. They’re putting a lot of effort on tweaking on a periodic basis the algorithm of Explore while the services suck. Contacts administration, groups administration, uploading services, mail administration and other important functions geared towards members’ satisfaction are not being attended. And so, I just wanted to leave this craziness on Flickr and Explore.

Both situations are ones where the perceived leaders and top contributors are “leveled” (though they would call it devaluation) periodically by a tweak to the formula used to determine popularity.

At the same time these debates are going on, Nancy White has begun an interesting discussion around the question of lurkers vs. contributors, riffing off of Jakob Nielsen’s post about participation inequality, or the 90-9-1 rule (90% lurk, 9% are occasional contributors, 1% represent the majority of participation).

As long as I have been online, this has been true. I’ve been involved in communities where I was a part of the 1%, but more often find myself in the “occasional” or “lurker” categories. It’s not that much different than any other social context face-to-face, but in online interaction it does point out that what is perceived as the wisdom of the masses may not be truly reflective of the mass at all.

Nielsen’s post has some ideas for facilitating participation among the lurkers which I think are quite good. Digg and Flickr base their algorithms on these factors; namely, making it easier to contribute (e.g., digging, faving, rating, ranking), allowing participation to be a “side effect” (e.g. others who dugg, others who fave’d, others who bought this item, etc), and rewarding participants, among others.

The last item is the most problematic. Sometimes the best contributions come from occasional contributors. How can those contributions be rewarded without devaluing the contributions made by the prolific contributors?

Flickr’s Interestingness

I don’t have any answers, just observations from my own recent Flickr experience. At first, I was miffed by the most recent shake-up to their Interestingness algorithm. They shook everything up in June or July and dumped all of my “interestingness photos” except 2. It happened again a couple of weeks ago, except now I fluctuate between 3 and 5, and the most recent shakeup included group participation in certain groups as a discounting factor. What bothered me about the change was this: If my photos were good enough for the front page in real time, why would they not be good enough now?

At first blush, I felt a bit dissed and devalued at the retroactive application of the algorithm.

Digg and the Home Page

My participation in Digg has always been peripheral (the 9%) for two reasons: 1) The demographic of that site is predominantly weighted toward younger males; and 2) What I write is not news, and I don’t have a ton of time to be hunting down the latest scoop and sending it to Digg. It’s usually a reaction or analysis of news. My participation tends toward digging, commenting, and blogging items that I think are worth sharing — passive participation.

Reasons for Participation

My goals for participation at Digg are to learn about something I might not otherwise learn. My goals for participation on Flickr are much more narcissistic. What I create for Flickr is mine and mine alone and yes — I want the attention that submitting quality content and receiving a homepage promotion can offer. That attention is my reward for the comments, faves, group participation and other community activity. If that is no longer a reward, what is my incentive to participate?

For me, the interaction is reward enough. I don’t think I could let a day pass without seeing the amazing creations that other people are making and posting, but I confess to still wishing they hadn’t dropped 17 of my photos from what they consider to be “interesting”. Still, I’ve met and interact daily with a group of amazing creative people who are the true engine under a terrific community and that’s enough to bring me back and keep me participating.

Change Invites New Voices

What makes both of these communities unique is that they surround an external and constantly-changing commodity. For Digg, news is the commodity; for Flickr, photos. The community interaction is sparked by the item submitted by the user, and so the items need to be “interesting” enough to spark an exchange. In a world of ever-changingness like the Internet, the only way to maintain “interesting” is to change what is presented to us to consider.

After thinking it through, I’m no longer miffed about the Flickr algorithm changes, nor did the Digg changes bother me. Since they changed Flickr’s algorithm, I’ve seen some very cool, very interesting and creative images come up on the front page and in the daily top 500 group of “interesting” photos. It’s likely that I would not have discovered them if there hadn’t been a bit of a shakeup. Likewise, Digg has had some new and interesting stories pop up on my feeds in the past couple of weeks that have sparked click-thrus and diggs from me, and it appears to me that the submitters are NOT the usual “top group”.

Tony at Deep Jive Interests points out that it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game, that inclusion shouldn’t be at the cost of excluding those already loyal to the community.

Answer a Question with a Question

My concluding question is for the 1%, the “top contributors” to answer for us and for themselves: Is there room for you to allow for some new voices, particularly if those new voices create new opportunities for inclusion of new and fresh content? Does one necessarily force out the other, or can the introduction of the “new voice” result in overall community growth and satisfaction?

Technorati Tags: Flickr, Digg, community_indicators, lurkers, online interaction, participation