|
[Previous entry: "From above"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Blog types"]
"Power law distributions and blogs"
02/09/2003 Entry
Clay Shirky looks at Power Law Distributions, Weblogs and Inequality. He explains nicely why it is that a small number of blogs get most inbound links (a good proxy for amount of attention) among all blogs.
As he notes, the overwhelming attention flowing to just a handful of blogs is not necessarily due to those few blogs being so much higher quality than many others (a point those of us on the fringes of the blogworld are happy to point out  ), but is rather a result of how people's preferences are influenced by other people's preferences simply through the amount of options to which one will be exposed. That is, there may be 1000 blogs out there, but I start with looking at my friend's blog who links to just ten other blogs and those ten other blogs have a higher chance of ending up on my list than the 990 blogs to which I see no direct links and thus cannot easily know about and even consider. This does not mean that the ten blogs I end up reading are the best, it just means that they are the ones I picked from among those to which I was exposed. Of course, there is some quality control built in. It's highly unlikely that really bad blogs will stay on top of the popularity chain. But the more blogs, the harder it is to break into the top ranks.
I like the blog classification scheme he presents at the end suggesting that in time most blogs will belong to one of three categories:
* blogs-as-mainstream-media
* Blogging Classic
* blogs-as-dinner-conversation
(I think it's funny that only the Classic gets to be capitalized.)
The author also suggests that its pointless to come up with definitions of "blogs" because this will change over time. This may explain why there are so few definitions out there, a point I noted recently. Perhaps because I am an academic, I'm still in favor of coming up with definitions. It is very hard to communicate with people about concepts which others do not understand or which may be understood in a myriad of ways. Even if definitions will fluctuate, they are useful to offer for the particular context. That is why I came up with a definition of portals a few years ago ("any site that classifies content and primarily presents itself as a one-stop point-of-entry to content on the Web").
I guess one question that remains is to what extent Blogging Classics will flourish and what kind of links will remain between blogs-as-mainstream-media and Blogging Classics which would still allow for "little voices" to influence bigger conversations. That is, some Blogging Classics will be more popular than others (but still not at the mainstream-media level) and some of them may be read by mainstream-media types. Or maybe not. Perhaps I'm thinking about the mainstream types in the wrong way. They may be the ones who simply offer commentary but never really engage with other bloggers directly. But that's so not interesting, for that I stick to the existing media outlets anyway. (At that level I still believe in the value added by editors.)
| |
