Empower Law

I'm inclined to agree with Clay Shirky that the growing power law distribution of the blogging world -- which basically means that a certain inequality of attention is built into the system right now -- is Not Necessarily A Bad Thing, or at least that the current system, in Clay's words, is "mostly fair." But the most interesting thing to me about Clay's essay -- and the subsequent response -- is that the active participants in the power law system are having a conversation about the distribution and what it means, and whether they want their little ecosystem to look like that.

Most systems that display this kind of behavior 1) don't have component parts with that level of self-awareness, and 2) don't have the opportunity to change the dynamics of the system if they choose. We hear a lot about architecture being destiny in the digital world, but the fact is that architecture has never been more flexible, and there have never been so many connected smart people interested in flexing its joints for good causes. A few years ago, when I was writing in Emergence about the limitations of the one-way linking built into the Web, there were very few practical applications out there that attempted to remedy this flaw. Now the web is teeming with them (Trackbacks, various Google hacks, Blogdex.) To a certain extent, the increased feedback of two-way linking may have amplified the scale-free phenomena that Clay describes. But the key point is that the one-way architecture isn't necessarily our destiny anymore, partially because some very smart people started to think that two-way links would be better for the system as a whole, and they set out to add them to mix.

So the question that I'm wrestling with is this: let's say we decided that the existing power-law distribution isn't quite fair enough, or that there's some other justification for encouraging a more egalitarian spread (equality of results, and not just opportunity.) If we decided that this was our goal, how would we go about doing it? What architectural changes would fight against the power law trend, without doing it in a command-and-control kind of way? Clay's piece suggests that perhaps the distribution is inevitable, but I doubt it. Clearly, to get a more even spread, there has to be a mechanism that amplifies the signal of new arrivals, since the 80/20 split is usually the result of early arrivals getting a disproportionate share of subsequent links.

Just to start things off, here's one idea I had today, inspired by a fascinating conversation over coffee with Meg: keep separate tabs on blogroll links and pointing-to-a-specific-story links ("story links" for short.) Then create a public ranking of sites with a high ratio of incoming story links to incoming blogroll links. So when Dave Winer, who has 1504 blogs pointing to him right now according to Technorati, manages to get 100 people to point to a new entry, it's no big news. But when Joe Newcomer, who is only mentioned on five blogrolls, manages to write something that gets twenty links -- that's a front page story. The great and powerful Sifry, as you might expect, is already working on something like this at Technorati, though his criteria is a little different.

The beauty of the model is that it creates a kind of "hot prospects" index, highlighting blogs that are punching above their weight. Then all you have to do is persuade the A-list bloggers to run an RSS feed of the index in their sidebar. It wouldn't change Jason's charts overnight, but it would be a start.

Comments

[David Sifry]

"Great and powerful?" Heh, you made my evening.

I've been playing with the algorithm that does the rankings on the new Technorati Interesting Recent Blogs and Technorati Interesting Newcomers to take into account the fundamental idea that Clay and Jason concluded:

There is a power law at work.

So, what I did was invert the law. :-) When I created the new lists a few days ago, my fundamental insight was to change the ranking equations from a simple linear relationship to a ratio. That was good, because I got better results than the linear relationship. BUT tonight when I changed the ratio relationship to an inverse square relationship, all of a sudden very interesting things started happening! I'm going to write up something on my blog talking about this, but the idea is simple:

If the a-list bloggers get links in a power-square curve, then by inverting that power-square equation, I can help to equalize the proportions nd show everyone on an even keel.

Take a look at the new Technorati links I mentioned above. There are some A-list bloggers there, but they are a small minority. The a-list folks, in general, will have to have significantly more incoming links to go up in rank on the Interesting recent blog list than someone with a smaller link cosmos.

The newcomers have it even better - I've capped it off so that once you get a large enough audience (as measured by the size of your link cosmos) then you're no longer a newcomer, you've got to play with the big boys and girls and make room for other interesting new bloggers.

Whaddaya think? I'm going to watch the stats for the next few days, but I think I'm onto something.

Dave

[Jeff]

Dave Pollard, I'm not sure I would totally agree with the newspaper analogy.

The INITIAL operator in that scenario isn't whether you're exceedingly good or can attract a niche audience, it's HOW people find out about you in the first place, word-of-mouth. Of course, content and niche are important. But I think they're more important in terms of sustaining your audience rather than attracting a new one.

Also, with newspapers, you get in a habit of reading one for all your news needs. It becomes your friend over your morning coffee. Your may not be too willing to forgo it for something new.

It's much easier to incorporate a new blog into your daily reads (especially if you're using a newsreader like Netnewswire). It's much easier to access new sites. It doesn't require changing any big habits (you already are surfing the web, no?).

I do think that where they overlap is how critical excellent distribution networks are to the success (popularity) of a blog. This is where Item 6 on your link above is important: link to other blogs and sites.

In reading Howard Rheingold's "Smart Mobs," reputation also seems to be is a key factor.

BTW, your other suggestions are good too. Thx. I think I'll bookmark your site!

[xian]

It seems that more and more people are bringing up the qualtitative distinctions between blogroll links and entry links. It's interesting, because I will probably link to another blog in my entries a number of times before I decide that they belong in my sidebar, but clearly the posted links are more influential than the blogroll links. That is, there is more of a "call to action" to follow the link when commenting on another blog than when simply endorsing it as a good read if you're looking for one.

So, is there some way to weight the two different kinds of links differently? One problem might be that technorati and other crawlers can't really tell what kinds of links they are seeing, at least not without some standardizes syntax wrapping blogrolls (and not everyone is using OPML or whatever else that might be).

[David Weisman]

One partial equalizer is length of time spent blogging. It somehow doesn't seem so unfair that someone who starts a blog for one day just out of curiousity and then forgets about it doesn't get as many hits on that day as someone who has been blogging and working on improving for years.

Of course part of the reason for the power distribution is that blogs with comment systems can be more fun if there are already more people there. On the other hand, fairness to readers may well mean reinforcing the power distribution or just changing the order. If ninety percent of blog readers who have time for only one blog will feel that one blog is only slightly better than another, do we really want to find a system to mislead some of them to one they will like less? To the extent people can enjoy blogging with few or no readers, the power law is not a problem. To the extent audience is important, rating systems should be designed with readers in mind so the total audience of blog readers does not diminish.

[David Weisman]

I reread the initial entry and found most of my concerns are partly addressed, but still think the main question should be, "How can we make it easier for readers to find blogs thay will enjoy?"

[Rikard Linde]

and perhaps

"How can we make it easier for readers to find individual POSTS they will enjoy?"

This is a case where filters will have an even tougher job to do; finding one good post (sometimes among a bunch of crap).
The blogosphere is up for the task though and my guess is that the results will exceed our wishes.

[Dave Pollard]

Interesting approach - I'll be watching to see what shows up with this ranking. My recent post:

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2003/02/10.html#a42

and the comments in response to it have some other ways that new bloggers can level the playing field. I think it's analogous to starting a new newspaper in a city that's already saturated: you have to be either extraordinarily good, or pick a niche that the major papers don't handle well, to compete with the big boys.

[Ross Mayfield]

You are asking the right question. And two-way linking does exist resulting in clusters of social and creative networks -- where power-laws do not.

See http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/2003/02/12.html#a284

You should be part of Joi Ito's Happening on Emergent Democracy tomorrow...
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/02/13/a_happening_on_emergent_democracy.html

Ross

[Kevin Marks]

Can I just point out the irony that Dave Sifry's blogs are ranked at numbers 1 & 2 on 'Interesting Newcomers' and 4&5 on 'Interesting Recent Blogs'... no wonder he likes these new metrics.

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is that in general power law relationships are subject to rapid flux - the field is sometimes known as 'catastrophe theory' for this reason - that upheavals follow a power law too.

More is made of this aspect in 'Ubiquity' than in 'Emergence', but they are two halves of he same phenomenon as far as I cans ee.

[dru]

A distinction really needs to be made between number of incoming links and attention. Since links are public, it's tempting to equate the two based on convenience, but I think the results are skewed from the outset... at least, if we're talking about attention in general and something more specific like attention from people with weblogs.

Mailing lists, google queries, usenet groups, non-weblog word of mouth, and email in general can all account for a large portion of a site's traffic; in some cases, all of it.

For example, I know that a significant portion of the people who read my weblog don't read very many other weblogs. Some don't have a very firm grasp of what a weblog is, some haven't even heard the term.

I suspect this will be the case of the majority of the population of the planet for a while yet; conversely, the weblog community--like any other community--has a slight tendency to see its own methods of ranking and valuation as centrally important. Not a bad thing, if it's understood within its own limitations.

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