February 15, 2006
the master speaks…
Clay Shirky writes more about powerlaws, in response to all the recent “inequality” kerfuffle.
The power law is always there, any time anyone wants to worry about it. Why the worrying happens in spasms instead of steadily is one of the mysteries of the weblog world.
The only things that are different in 2006 are the rise of groups and of commercial interests. Of the top 10 Technorati-measured blogs, (Disclosure: I am an advisor to Technorati), all but one of them are either run by more than one poster, or generate revenue from ads or subscriptions. (The exception is PostSecret, whose revenue comes from book sales, not directly from running the site.) Four of the top five and five of the ten are both group and commercial efforts2 Responses to “the master speaks…”
I also agree with Doc Searls.
And I think it’s funny that we speak of the “shape” of the blogosphere, and A Lists, and blogospheric conditions and growth…
…when all any user ever experiences is a micro-blogospheria composed of blogrolled, bookmarked favorites, SE results surfing, and RSS/Atom syndications feeds.
In feeds, we don’t even interact with the blog itself, but only a Fed Version of it in a Feed Reader…often stripped of comments, always stripped of sidebar communications.
We don’t interact with a “blogosphere” at all. We interact with a little list of blogs we like, with some excursions into the “badlands” of unknown, and largely undesirable, blogs.
@steven — wondered where you were. Feeds are useful to keep you aware of updates without having to check all your favourite blogs, but I’m with you here — if the post is even remotely interesting then I want to get the full context + comments, so head straight to the blog.
I even find myself visiting my favourite when they’re not updated … how sad!