Most people lurk online—understanding them requires new tools

Engagement scales must address those who aren’t very engaged at all

In “Toward a Definition of Engagement,” Katie Paine writes about how to define engagement: she suggests a six-point scale with which to measure it. If we refer to Jakob Nielson’s participation inequality research, we can predict that an engagement distribution will be highly skewed toward lurkers.

But lurkers, by definition, leave few traces of their activity—so how can an engagement scale measure the way they behave online?