Do intranets follow the 1-9-90 rule?

My last post Facebook behind the Firewall generated some interesting comments about motivating employees to participate in Intranet 2.0 type activities. About this time last year a popular rule of thumb emerged that said for a typical social media site:

• 1% create
• 9% modify or comment
• 90% just read an lurk

But this is now looking inaccurate (sweeping statements are always inaccurate). A  recent McKinsey report on user-generated content (free registration to get full article) shows a much more nuanced spread for example:

 

 

There is also Forrester Research on contribution patterns that suggest much higher levels of involvement:

 

Admittedly, neither of these are directly about intranets, however, if your target community is only 100 people, they do give some hope that more than one person will create something.