Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives

Which of these are you?  I’m clearly a creator and a joiner.

Forrester has created 6 overlapping groups of people from a social media perspective (paraphrased):

1. Creators.  These are people who publish on the web (blog, website, video, podcasts).
2. Critics.  These are people who post reviews online, comment on blogs, or contribute in other ways to existing content.
3. Collectors.  These are people who read lots of information and may vote or tag pages or photos.
4. Joiners.  These are people who have a profile on different social networking sites and visit them with some regularity.
5. Spectators.  These are people who read online information, list to podcasts, and watch videos but do not participate.
6. Inactives.  As suspected, these are the people who aren’t engaged in any of these social technologies. 

The other thing that I think is interesting is their breakdown of these groups by percentage (Based on their North American Technographics Interactive Marketing Online Survey (Q2 2009)).  As expected, in all these categories (except inactives), the younger age groups are more likely to represent these categories.  For example, 46% of people 18-24 are creators while only 12% of people over 55 are creators. 

• 24% of people are creators
• 37% are critics
• 21% are collectors
• 51% are joiners
• 73% are spectators
• 18% are inactives