Research published at the end of October this year, shows clearly that when consumers are deciding whether to make a purchase, online reviews are incredibly important. They come second only to getting personal word-of-mouth recommendations from friends. However it is a certain sector of web-users who are generating these reviews – the ‘most frequent contributors’ and they – 9 per cent of web users – actually generate 80 per cent of web content.

Key findings about influence in online communities:

• While only a small number might contribute to online discussion and review, many more are reading. ‘Lurkers’ are heavily influenced by what they read online, especially when it comes to reviews and recommendations.
• Marketers should spend more time courting most frequent contributors, if they want their message to be disseminated – however, this should be handled cautiously. Marketers have often chosen to ignore this small group of online enthusiasts, feeling that they are not representative of their average customer. However these most frequent contributors are, in effect, marketing to the consumer and should be seen as a mouthpiece – one which a company does not employ. Therefore, courting them is a great way of reaching the average consumer, even if the other consumers are not talking back.
• Most frequent contributors are different. They often want to persuade, educate or entertain. They might be single, they might be ‘geeks’ and they might well work in the technology sector. Also, they are often democrats, and often very young – half are under 22.

Additional findings about the internet’s influence:

• People would rather look on the web than call the manufacturer, or speak to customer service.  Customer Support Information on the web comes second only to consulting a manual. However the approach varies with age – an older person is likely to look on a company’s website, while younger people rely more on search engines. If you want to cut the costs of running a customer support line – write a very good manual and create an intelligent, well laid-out search-engine-friendly on-line information repository, and remember to use code as well as PDF documents, if you want the search engines to see this content, and thus reach your younger audience.
• The most daily use, after search, occurs within social communities such as Facebook and MySpace, news sites and online banking. 
• Most valued sites in the US are: Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook.  The largest number of web-users visit mapping sites, (Mapquest), retail sites (Amazon) and Reference (Wikipedia).
• Young people (age 22 and under) create about half of all online user-generated content.
• Fourteen-year-olds are most satisfied with the social networking sites and then this satisfaction declines with age. 
• Despite extensive publicity, the community sites SecondLife and Twitter reach only a few per cent of US Internet users. Twenty per cent of US users have used dating sites, then twenty-three per cent have visited virtual worlds, such as SecondLife. The number is just slightly higher for multiplayer game sites, at twenty-six per cent, while thirty-six per cent of users admit to visiting pornography sites, with this being split between fifteen per cent of females and 

Communities can be grouped into five categories:

• Proximity: users are geographically close – Craigslist.

• Purpose: users share a common task – eBay and Wikipedia.

• Passion: users have a common interest – YouTube and Dogster.

• Practice: users have a business or learning interest.

• Providence: users discover connections in common Facebook.

To create a successful online community, you need to understand the breakdown and how this affects the type of traffic that you want to generate. Successful sites can:

• Get a lot of daily use from large numbers of people (search and social sites are good examples.)
• Get occasional use from large numbers of people (reference, shopping, etc.)
• Get intense use from small numbers of people and are ignored by everyone else.

Understand your site category and optimise your design for this.