Steve Rubel came back to blog just in time, showcasing this brilliant report from Forrester Research – Social Technographics. The graphic he highlights is incredibly revealing on its own:
The “creators” group are basically the Linkerati here. “Critics”, “collectors”, “spectators” and “joiners” also fit occassionaly into that profile, as they can be part of a content piece’s viral movement across the web.
I actually take this research very positively – though 13% may seem like a small number, it’s actually considerably higher than I would have suspected. A more participatory web means a sphere more apt to help great ideas and great content spread naturally.
What I’d love to see even more is the “creators” group broken down further into sub-sects like:
- Bloggers
- Web Publishers
- Journalists
- Multimedia Content Creators
- Forum Contributors (though this may fall under “joiners” or “critics” as well)
- Academic Publishers
- etc.
My other question would be watching trends over time – do more people become “creators” or “critics” or does the number stay relatively stable over time. I want to know if the MySpace generation will also become a generation of content generators, writers and linkers.
p.s. If you want to buy the report from Forrester, it’s $279… Maybe we need to start charging more for the SEOmoz articles? 
UPDATE: As Shor pointed out, the researcher, Charlene Li, discusses the data in greater depth and offers review copies to bloggers here.
