Weez Blog

Clay Shirky : Weblog ecosystem, Power Laws, Fake Real Estate and the Media

Weblog ecosystem, Power Laws, Fake Estate and the Media.

Other Shirky links:

• http://www.shirky.com/


• The FCC, Weblogs, and Inequality


• Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality


• A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

Everyone is connected to everyone else. This is a loose conversation. Not all nodes connect to one another, but by hops, one can navigate to all nodes.

Some links have more links than others. These are preferential connectivities. The patterns arise from uncoordinated linkages. Technorati, blogdex scan the weblogs hourly and indicates who is linking to whom.

This is an indication of audience ñ reader distribution.

Distribution is a Power Law curve.
Top 100 ends at 642 inbound links.
The Average is not the median. Most webloggers have below weblog traffic.

The 80/20 rule. Because of the constant left-hand pull. (50/5) Half the readership is taken by the top 5%. Adding more people makes this more unequal. It started unequal and is becoming more so.

Out in the tail, the clusters are tighter. More like friendship than publishing. The interconnections are structured more like dinner conversation, rather than wide publication. Loose conversation gives way to clusters as one goes to the tail.

As one goes to the left, the pattern is more a broadcast pattern. A one way direction. Readers cannot comment to one another. Comments donít scale.

This pattern is applicable to other social environments.

Whoever is most connected is likely to have great social skills and some power.

This says something about media. Media is handled like real estate. Regulatory agencies treat radio and tv tis way.

Weblogs are different in these manners:

1. No Central Control


2. No Special Technology


3. No Scarcity/Fake Estate (construction increases the size of the system)

Therefore when we look at weblog distribution, what we are seeing are purely social patterns.

Conclusions:

1. Broadcast Patterns Happens


2. There is an A List (Youíre not on it)


3. Freedom vs. Equality

The point is thisÖin a medium in which there are little barriers to entry, where global publication is there for all, it is surprising that the Power Law curve exists in this medium.

Question: Are all links created equal? Will there be a rise of authorative links?

Answer: The filtering is added after the fact. Google uses a page rank theorem. Those that have a lot of links, are assumed to be authorative, and are therefore weighted more. Google doesnít like blogs because of the web log. But in time, there will be some different means of finding authorictive voice.

Posted by weez at October 18, 2003 08:32 AM