Bowling Alone on YouTube

I could use this space to talk about YouTube's IPO aspirations, but that's really a limited subject until they give me any sign they're going to turn a profit. Instead, I'll point out this article on the "1% rule":

1% of visitors to any "interactive" site actually create content (Guardian)

Using numbers from YouTube, Yahoo Groups and Wikipedia, the article suggests that slightly less than 1% of users on these sites will create content, around 10% will offer comments or suggestions, and the other 89% will view passively. Obviously, you want a balance of all of these groups; if YouTube has 20 million unique users, having all of them create videos would result in much banality and duplication.

The group probably most essential to survival is the creators, and the question is how to get the creators to stick around; my suggestion would be to fully embrace the blatant role of comment-whoring as a motivator, and look for strategies to get the 89% of passive users to become active participants at the comment level -- yielding sincere, organic motivation for your creators.