Clay Shirky’s article, Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality, applies the power law to the world of blogging. He writes about the rise of an “A-List,” a small group of bloggers who constitute a majority of the traffic in the blogosphere. Shirky discovers that the online world, more specifically the blogosphere, is not filled with freedom and equality after all.
Shirky explains, “Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.”
He goes on to clarify explaining that in particular systems where most people are free to choose between a multitude of options, there is a small group, in this case the “A-list,” that will receive an inordinate amount of traffic.
Power law distributions are more likely to arise in social systems where large amounts of people express their preferences among several options. Shirky explains that, “as the number of options rise, the curve becomes more extreme.” So basically as the blogosphere gets bigger the percentage of “A-listers” as a proportion to total bloggers, gets smaller.
In ranking the likeness of a particular blog, one would assume that they were making the decision on their own. Unbeknownst to them, their freedom of choice is not always free or rather, they do not realize that they are not making a decision on their own. A small number of blogs that have been chosen (as in “liked”) in the past are more likely to be chosen in the future. From this system Shirky describes the emergence of a “preference premium.” So future users will not be selecting blogs at random but by preference premium, which has been built up by all of the past users.
There still is no answer as to why one blog may be preferred over another. Shirky comments that it could be a “preference for quality…a preference for marketing” or a preference based on what one’s friends like. It is just important to not that for whatever reason “diverse and free systems” can create power law distributions.
Shirky poses the question “Is the inequality fair?” He is referring to the inequality in the blogosphere. He explains that there are four things that indicate that the current inequality is primarily fair:
1) The freedom in the blogosphere.
2) Blogging is a daily activity; if a blogger stopped writing, his or her blog would just disappear.
3) The “stars exist because of the preference of hundreds of others pointing to them.”
4) There is no real A-list because there is no discontinuity.
By relying on power law distribution, Shriky doubts that there are bloggers that are as talented and deserving as the current A-list who are simply not getting any traffic. Even though the blogosphere is expanding to see more readers and writers, Shriky believes that they will just add to the traffic of the current A-listers. As the online world gets bigger, it will get harder and harder for someone to prove themselves in the blogosphere. This gap will just keep growing and growing.
Questions
The idea of the power law seems to be fixed in mathematics, but do you really believe that all of the great blogs have already been discovered?
In your opinion, is the inequality of the blogosphere fair? What do you think about the idea of a free but unequal market?
In hopes that broadband can be extended to the masses, what do you think will happen to the weblog and this online marketplace of ideas?
Shirky writes this whole article to explain what the A-list is. He goes on to show how it exists with the idea of power law, but then when he lists his four reasons as to why the current inequality is fair, he says that there really is no A-list because there is no discontinuity. What is this contradiction all about? What does he mean by this?
To check out more of Clay Shirky’s writing, click here.
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