I had planned on writing something to this effect a few months back when some sort of Internet drama was winding its way through the online fan community. It was meant as words of reassurance, but I didn't have any hard numbers to back it up (I like hard numbers), and was likely distracted by something tangible - like a shiny balloon - before committing any words.

But it's basically this: An online community is by definition a niche community. It is only a small segment of a larger whole, and as such, can never speak definitively for that whole.

In other words: Internet buzz is still only anecdotal and more often than not, doesn't really mean anything.

A while back, there was some sort of discussion of the latest drama that's "tearing apart the fan community." Whenever you hear that, don't panic. The fan community is robust and resilient, and, contrary to popular belief, exists mostly offline!

Starwars.com gets a lot of visitors. But most never enter the forums. And of that small percentage, most never post. Even fewer are bloggers. If something ever erupts into a big deal in forums or blogs, it may be easy to assume its something that affects the fan community as a whole... but it's almost always just contained to that small audience.

Sure, there's debate and controversy. That's found in any community of any size, but it's always a good idea to take a step back and try to wrap your mind around how many people are really, truly involved in the debate. Even the most heated continuity debate involved, what, 40-45 people? And do these people really represent the entire community?

More often, they don't. Take a look at avid online forums and compare the opinions expressed therein to evidence supported by hard numbers. Comics series that everyone loved, movies that everyone think are the best of a series, the author that everyone loves, or the toy that everyone thinks is the best are quite often the lowest selling examples of their kind. Example: Internet fanboy buzz would have you believe that Superman Returns cleans the floor with X3: The Last Stand. The public, however, embraced X3 with $234 million while giving Supes only $194 million. No accounting for taste, of course.

So do these online opinions ever matter? Yes, when strictly dealing with online matters. When a majority of forum users, for example, express an opinion about the forums - well, then, yes, that's definitely tangible data. But if those forums users are providing an opinion on, oh, video games or toys, or ice cream, than that number needs to be weighed against something else.

An example I always would point to were spoilers back in the movie days. The spoiler audience was the loudest, but they could never understand that they were the minority. The majority of users did not want spoilers, and tended to avoid forums altogether. This created a very skewed perspective in the mind of the spoiler-hounds. They DEMANDED more spoileriffic content from starwars.com, because they felt they were the majority. The analogy I used would be going to a cigar lounge, taking a look at the clientele, and then assuming that EVERYONE smokes and wants a cigar.

What prompted this blog? The rather disappointing result of the Snakes on a Plane buzz. The Internet would have had you convinced that it was the biggest movie ever. Instead, it had a pretty lame weekend opening of $14 million. And the media acted surprised. Shame on them. It takes, what, 30 to 300 people to create Internet buzz. It takes far more people than that to open a movie effectively. Why do you think Lucasfilm invested so heavily in promotion and marketing to reach beyond the online audience for Episode III? Because the online audience, regardless of how loud, devoted and enthusiastic they may be, is only one small piece of the pie.

(A brief aside, Snakes is great. Saw it on Friday and it was everything I hoped it would be).

If Internet buzz actually meant anything, Serenity would have been a blockbuster and not a box office failure, Firefly wouldn't have been canceled, George Bush wouldn't have won the 2004 election, and Snakes on a Plane would be on the fast track to beat Titanic. Instead, all the buzz verifies is that the opinions expressed online are
only indicative of opinions found in that online neighborhood. (I remember TFN ran a poll a few years back that essentially boiled down to a measurement that TFN readers prefer TFN. Shocker.)

The Internet isn't so much bringing everyone together. It's basically allowing us to continue our niches, clubs, and segmented audiences online. But if you ever hear anyone say "EVERYONE online is talking about it," or that something is an Internet sensation, it has enough real-world weight as saying that everyone at your high school is saying it.