http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

This article discussed the emergence of power law models and popularity imbalance in the popularity of web-blogs. Addressing the common observation that a small group of web-blogs account for a disproportionally large amount of web traffic, the article explains that it is not individuals’ behaviors, but “Diversity plus freedom of choice [that] creates inequality.” In fact, the greater diversity a community has, the more extreme the inequality will be. In a system where there is freedom to choose from many options, a power law distribution occurs.

In 2003, when this data was gathered, the top two blogs of 433 accounted for 5% of all inbound links. The top dozen counted for 20%, and the top 50, which make up only 12% of the blogs, counted for half of all inbound links. Such power law models are prevalent, emerging within many online communities. Livejournal users ranked by number of friends and Yahoo! Groups ranked by number of subscribers both are power laws.

This kind of system has both fair and unfair aspects. This kind of natural sorting is inevitable when people’s choices are influenced by other people’s choices. This kind of extreme popularity for a small subset is not necessarily unfair because it relies on “distributed approval that would be hard to fake.” However, power laws tend to set in quickly, preserving a system in a homeostatic state at an early time. This makes it harder for new members to gain popularity and is aversive to change.

Thus, this shows that power laws are ubiquitous occurrences that arise out of any community that allows democratic free choice and public opinion. Though it may cause unbalanced popularity for a few, it also shows that all it takes is one small step to cause a chain reaction that would lead to inclusion in this few.