Slashdot Mirror
Modeling Linking on the Web
An Anonymous Coward writes "Amazon has a much greater market share among online bookstores compared to the greatest market share for offline stores. How is this possible? Because the web changes how people find information. There are millions of links to Amazon on the web, which makes it more likely for people to find Amazon when surfing the web, or when using search engines which typically use link popularity in ranking. This makes it harder for new businesses to compete. Researchers have discovered that across the entire web, links are distributed according to a "power law" which leads to "rich get richer" or "winner's take all" behaviour where a small number of sites get the vast majority of links and traffic. A new study just released by NEC shows that this behaviour varies in different communities, and shows how to predict competition in different areas. For example, you can see how much tougher competition is among booksellers compared to photographers."
could this be the first post?
-------------------------------END--COMMUNICATION
Mod parent (GigsVT post) UP!
Off-topic, but have you noticed that, virtually always, a post goes to +5, and then along comes a pessimist to not it down -1 overrated? Every now and then I post some blubbering rant that gets a 5, which has 0 effect on my 50 karma (note: That isn't a "brag" : I'm sure about 80% of Slashdot's readership has 50 karma. It's like gold in a duped gold world in Ultima Online: It loses relavence), but then along comes the -1 to knock me down by 1. If ever I get a 5 post, I know that within 48 hours a -1 overrated will come along.
Rather than provide insight, original articles, or innovative design, Slashdot realises that its success has been widely due to its ubiquity in the geek community and its strict adherence to the party line. "You can't be fired for reading Slashdot".
While other technology sites have strived for quality, Slashdot has strived to market -- and achieved the impossible. Shocking rather than informing, it manages to be a bastion of leftist thinking, while owned by a profit making corporation.
An anonymous source stated his surprise that a careless Slashdot editor has not yet posted an article suggesting that Slashdot exists to waste the time of free thinkers, preventing them making any real change. "The 'conspiracy theory' topic on Slashdot seems tailor made for this sort of thing," he added.
There is a cap at 50, although some people are still above that. I'm pretty sure some were in the 200's. Negatives can knock them down but positives will not bring them up.