Wednesday, February 5, 2003

Branches of egality

In Roots of inequality, Chris Gulker picks up on a thread that started here on his own blog, and moved through Azeem Azhar's Weblog:

Assume that the growth is the same per cent for all sites at each interval: then the leading sites will begin to pull away since they continually increase by a larger number of page reads or links relative to others, since their growth is a percentage of a larger base.

If growth is unequal (which I think is the actual case), and more popular sites grow faster, then the effect is amplified further. Positive feedback loop, predictable outcome. Since there are finite Web surfers during any interval, the big ones get bigger at the expense of the little ones.

Wealth works the same way: people who have only a little bit more than their neighbors can save and make investments and earn interest, where the poor neighbor can only just afford to pay the bills. Small sums, invested, compounded over time, can become quite large. Larger sums get even bigger even faster....

So, it's luck and small differences in initial conditions... I would wager there is a white paper in Complexity Theory circles somewhere that describes a similar mechanism. We humans of course, stand ever ready to attach racial or cultural signifigance to this, when it's probably just luck and math (read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel about the roots of inequality, if you haven't already).

Interestingly, though, there can be lots of domains where this operates. A really popular Weblog doesn't get anything like the hits that a popular portal does: yet it's enough to make a few celebs... Dave Winer and Doc Searls come to mind.

Several thoughts here.

According to the numbers that show up here, this blog runs around 2,000 reads per day. (And how many are automata? I have no idea.) It's been that way for about a year, even while the number of pages that mention my name on Google has gone up by an order of magnitude. I have no idea what to make of that. I feel privileged to have the many readers I do, and I'll never stop being amazed that anyone considers me a "celebrity." The word frankly creeps me out. This here is a steam valve on the side of my day job. As what I do, it's not even secondary. It's tertiary.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan (who also have other day jobs) say they have 70,000 to 100,000 reads a day (maybe somebody can point to the exact numbers). Yet in terms of putting out and receiving links, Glenn and I are in the same range, with a big lead over Andrew. Not sure what to make of that, either (except that Andrew is rather new to linking, and many of his links don't go to blogs).

Anyway, I don't think "celebrity," "popularity," "traffic," "audience" and "power curves" have much to do with what makes blogs worth reading, which is the same as what make blogs attract links.

Hence the headline. Blogs are branchy. They fan out toward everyone else's light. No one blog shades any other. On the contrary, there are some blogs (like this one, for instance) that go out of their way to link to new blogs and strangers, to spread the linklove, as Tony Pierce puts it.

Anyway, it's fun to do the math and the numbers, but that's not what blogging is about. We're talking here. Not broadcasting.

The Blog Reader

Susan Kitchens has a long and very interesting piece on the author A.S. Byatt; plus an interesting Columbia post, including prescient photos of shuttle tiles from her own photo library.

Scott Knaster launched This is not your practice blog yesterday. Yesterday I came home to find the card of a United States Marshal stuck in my front door.

Kevin Lynch has a blog now too. Thanks to random($foo) for the pointer.

Joi Ito: Draft essay about the revolution in Japan, v. 0.3. Because the system is no longer able to change itself, a revolution is required. Mitch responds.

Dan Gillmor on Fran Quattrone: The odor surrounding Quattrone has been growing for years.

Dallas Morning News: Witnesses to history — images and personal accounts from readers and viewers

Atul Chitnis in Space, the final frontier?: ... why is no new space travel technology being developed? In effect, the world *still* uses the same technology as it did almost half a decade ago! The "booster" drive the shuttles use is very similar to the Saturn V technology that catapulted the Apollo missions into space in the 60s.

... and a thanks back to readers for Google News help.

Giving a whole new meaning to "upload"

Here are the wake-up tunes for each day of Columbia's doomed voyage.

Thanks to Hanan for the link.