Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Juran developed the principle after observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

The 80-20 rule is also a common rule of thumb in business, i.e. 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.

via Use the 80-20 Rule to Increase Your Website’s Effectiveness – sixrevisions.com

A great article, but I notice the Six Revisions page has some clutter itself. Not anything like as bad as most big blogs though.

This is actually one of the reasons I like this default Posterous ‘Clean Sheet’ theme so much, and I hesitate before adding any extras (even the AdSense ads I wanted to put on). Now I look again with a more critical eye, I think I may remove some of the sidebar links I stuck there when – I doubt they get much use.

Also, what a lovely pie chart!

EDIT: It’s interesting how this seems to contradict the advice from this SEOmoz landing page case study.