For some reason, Clay Shirky's 2003 essay "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality" seems to be making the rounds again. Allow me to remind the world that, at least as of 2004, the distribution of links to weblogs was definitely not a power law. Whether this matters to Shirky's broader arguments about the development of new media is a different question; perhaps all that's needed is for the distribution to be right skewed and heavy tailed. But the actual essay stresses the power law business, which is wrong.
If you have more recent data and would like an updated analysis, you can use our tools and do it yourself.
Posted at June 28, 2010 09:31 | permanent link