Plone "Industries"

I was building a spreadsheet for a nefarious purpose tonight and needed a list of the types of domains within which Plone is used. So I went over to Plone.net's site listing and viewed the page source. There I was able to cut-and-paste the tags for the "Industry" pull-down list. A few moments with a text-to-columns tool and I had my list.

While I was at it, I took the time to count the number of sites listed within each category. I offer these not as absolute numbers, but as relative frequencies. After all, Plone.net is a self-reporting site.

Industry	Count
Accounting	5
Aerospace and Defense	8
Agriculture and Forestry	13
Arts and Entertainment	101
Associations	54
Automotive	20
Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals	13
Business	36
Business and Society	16
Business Law	15
Business Services	41
Business Travel	13
Chemicals	1
Classifieds	1
Construction and Maintenance	24
Consumer Goods and Services	30
Cooperatives	7
Customer Service	19
Dictionaries	4
Directories	8
E-Commerce	28
Education	60
Education and Training	203
Electronics and Electrical	15
Employment	7
Energy and Environment	22
Environmental	30
Financial Services	20
Food and Related Products	24
Government	185
Healthcare	67
History	7
Hospitality	14
Human Resources	14
Industrial Goods and Services	20
Information Services	30
Information Technology	61
International Business and Trade	16
Investing	6
Libraries	13
Major Companies	16
Management	14
Marketing and Advertising	39
Materials	10
Military	7
Mining and Drilling	2
News and Media	42
Non-profits	258
Opportunities	1
Publishing and Printing	20
Real Estate	21
Regional	40
Resources	3
Retail Trade	15
Science	57
Small Business	36
Software	41
Telecommunications	10
Textiles and Nonwovens	3
Transportation and Logistics	12
Wholesale Trade	7

The big winners are non-profits (258), education & training (203), government (185), and arts & entertainment (101). Rounding out the top ten are healthcare (67), IT (60), science (57), associations (54), and new & media (42).

Its interesting that both non-profits (often non-governmental organizations) and government rank high. Also note that if one combines education & training with education, their total (263) exceeds even non-profits.

The total of 1925 does not equal the 1480 sites listed on Plone.net. That's because entries can choose to be associated with more than one industry. On average, each site is associated with 1.3 categories.

One final statistic--I ran the numbers for a frequency distribution, the number of industry categories that have a count within a given range.

Range	Number of industries
0-25	41
26-50	11
51-75	5
76-100	0
101-125	1
126-150	0
151-175	0
176-200	1
201-225	1
226-250	0
251-275	1

Graphically displayed, this shows that there are very few categories with large numbers of sites and numerous categories with just a handful of sites. This, I believe, is an example of the "long tail" phenomenon. More on that in another post, but its probably key to a part of Plone's success.