Robert Kittinger

Personality Profiling the Web 2.0 User

In the previous article I talked about the differences that can be experienced by a site depending on whether or not their users “feel” like volunteer labor vs. participants in an online community. This is different. I-O psychologists have a popular tool called the NEO-5 personality inventory. It breaks people down on…guess how many dimensions.  You can remember these 5 dimensions with OCEAN; which stands for Openness to new experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Everyone should know that we now call Neuroticism “Emotional Stability”, so that we don’t upset people when they score high on Neuroticism…I mean, score low on “Emotional Stability”.

But, what does this have to do with Web 2.0 users, you might say. Aren’t they like everyone else? Maybe…but we (and companies) don’t care about just every ol’ Web 2.0 user. We want to know about the top 20% that produces 80% of our content. And by analyzing the personality of this super producer group, we can learn how to best interact with and maximize, this CRITICAL human resource.

For far too long internet companies have been looking at site users as just users. There must be a paradigm shift, from this old Web 1.0 mindset to the Web 2.0 mindset of viewing users as an extension of the company; as an extended human resource that needs to be managed as well or better than the in-house workers.

Let’s think about the ASA cycle (attraction, selection, attrition). Websites attract users, something happens, and then the users leave the website for something else. This cycle can be understood in a short session, but I’m looking at the long term user “career” with a site. What impacts their decision to leave? What personality traits impact this decision? And is it worth the money to track? More next time…