The Pareto Principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This is better known as the 80/20 rule. Applying this to social networking membership, you soon realize you are among a sea of inactive users just taking up server space. According to Facebook, the site has more than 175 million active users. They define “active user” as someone who has logged in to their account more than once in thirty days. –hardly active…

Anyway, the goal is to explore the personalities of these active users. We can easily examine these under three distinct behaviors and approximate their size with the 80/20 rule:

· Networkateers (9%): members who provide original content and interact with others

· King Cobras (11%): members who only comment on other’s content

· Fort Knoxians (80%): members who do not interact with others nor provide original content

Networkateers: Simply defined as the movers and shakers of the social networking world–people not afraid to air their laundry (sometimes dirty) and typically share opinions on a broad range of topics–the users posting links to videos, funny articles, or personal blogs. The same people not afraid to tweet, tweet, and retweet. The nine percent estimate is based on Facebook’s percentage of users who change their status message within a 24-hour period—which is one of the most basic functions of the website.

King Cobras: Not meant to be negative, but an accurate term to illustrate the behavior of this type of user. Much like a King Cobra that waits patiently, almost motionless before striking its prey, these social networking personalities only comment on others content. Usually, making calculated and overly cautious comments on others pictures, posts, and status updates. It’s safe to say, these users are worried that their online content could hurt them with future endeavors (jobs, relationships, etc.). In the blogosphere, these users largely go by aliases or stay anonymous.

Fort Knoxians: With the growing awareness of identity theft and internet scams, more and more people are just along for the social networking ride. Simply being a member grants access to friends’ pages and gives the individual user a window to their network, but they are reluctant to share any personal information or interact with other users—waiting for the day they can tell their friends “I told you so!” for over-sharing online.

Personalities are usually defined by the leading attribute (Myers-Briggs or Big Five) of extroversion or introversion. In the social networking space, extroverts could easily be a Fort Knoxian and an introvert could live a more social life (or a Second Life) as a Networkateer.

Facebook touts that the average user has 120 friends; or better explained, the average user knows only 10 people that actually post their own content and regularly interacts with others.

………no offense to Fort Knox Army Base or King Cobras!