Small World Networks

Chantelle looks at the Barabási readings on networks, paying particular attention to the 80/20 rule (which also describes blogging activity in network media). Kevin also discusses the 80/20 distribution, power laws, preferential attachment and growth. Preferential attachment and growth are important because it is how networks work, and also before being figured out our models for networks tended to think of them as static, and random. Olivia picks up the stuff about power laws, which is the maths behind the long tail. Anna D has a nice post about getting lost and bored, going elsewhere, returning, then a moment where things went click. Louisa discusses 80/20 and wonders if 20% of employees really do generate 80% of profits. Certainly at a university there would be an affinity between 20% producing 80% of the research, and I would suspect research income. Also with the blogs I don’t bother with accurate numbers but there would certainly be no more than 30 very active bloggers in network media out of 130, and in tutorials it is clear that most questions come from a very small group… Samuel mentions power laws and links to A list tech and tech culture blogger Jason Kottke’s post on power laws. Brittany discusses the economics of the long tail, and repeats Anderson’s ‘three rules’.