tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post113277406845151622..comments2024-03-26T16:03:42.608-06:00Comments on Flares into Darkness: Escaping the blogosphereambisinistralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03836786826294202405noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post-1132802429777460622005-11-23T20:20:00.000-07:002005-11-23T20:20:00.000-07:00Ok, anonymous, we here at YARGB listen to our audi...Ok, anonymous, we here at YARGB listen to our audience! So, what would you like to see happen here?<BR/><BR/>Oh, and Morgan, you've hit on something whether you know it or not. Somebody wrote a paper showing that under certain conditions, distributions of distributions will follow the Zipf distribution, and that this explains in some sense the ubiquity.MeaninglessHotAirhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11767916621253839341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post-1132784516831256942005-11-23T15:21:00.000-07:002005-11-23T15:21:00.000-07:00The circle will be complete when the former blogge...<I>The circle will be complete when the former bloggers begin to be seduced by the notion of themselves as insiders; in other words, they will become increasingly like the Old Media which they initially and rightly excoriated.</I><BR/><BR/>Exactly right, and it's already happening. (And not just Jarvis.) I'm finding my interest in a blog is generally inversely proportional to my perception of the "insiderness" of the author. And while I don't frequently comment on blogs, there's something off-putting about a blog without comments.<BR/><BR/>And since OSM^H^H^H PJM was mentioned, Roger's blog (and to a lesser degree Charles') became notably less interesting to me as the pajamas thing started ramping up.<BR/><BR/>I guess I'm looking for some different POV's - not reversion to the mean.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post-1132780870839211952005-11-23T14:21:00.000-07:002005-11-23T14:21:00.000-07:00Word frequency follows it, popularity of ice cream...Word frequency follows it, popularity of ice cream flavor, supposedly, as well.<BR/><BR/>I wonder if the number of phenomena describable by various distributions follows a power distribution.Morganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13849696277722291312noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post-1132780836008377462005-11-23T14:20:00.000-07:002005-11-23T14:20:00.000-07:00Actually, though, there's another aspect of this t...Actually, though, there's another aspect of this that flenser doesn't mention: the "long tail" means that there are very small specific markets. Goth knitting patterns, say. The traditional media depends on having very large circulations in order to be profitable, because the fixed costs of traditional publication are so high. (Big presses, big distribution networks, and you have to pay about the same for those whether you circulate a million or ten million.)<BR/><BR/>In fact, I'd argue that "main stream media" <I>does</I> have a straightforward, positive meaning: the mainstream media is the old media built around high cost of entry. When I was talking with Roger, I did the numbers in a back of envelope fashion, and saw that for the <I>New York Times</I> the basic cost per copy is just about its "cover price".<BR/><BR/>Internet publication, whether through blogs or other means like iUniverse, has a much smaller cost of entry (essentially zero) and <I>very very low</I> cost per "copy".<BR/><BR/>What this means is that the place on the "long tail" at which an operation becomes profitable is much farther down the tail. The exciting thing is that because of this, people could very well be able to make a small but respectable income publishing a small but respectable publication.<BR/><BR/>When someone can make a couple hundred bucks a month out of their goth knitting patterns site, the publishing business will be <B>very</B> different.Charlie Martinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14586506407851173416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post-1132779845957800582005-11-23T14:04:00.000-07:002005-11-23T14:04:00.000-07:00City populations obey it, record popularity obeys ...<I>City populations obey it, record popularity obeys it, movie popularity obeys it.</I><BR/><BR/>particle size distributions follow it, network traffic follows it, income distribution follows it (Pareto distribution is an inverse power law), and on and on.Charlie Martinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14586506407851173416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post-1132779683460517242005-11-23T14:01:00.000-07:002005-11-23T14:01:00.000-07:00The circle will be complete when the former blogge...<I>The circle will be complete when the former bloggers begin to be seduced by the notion of themselves as insiders; in other words, they will become increasingly like the Old Media which they initially and rightly excoriated.</I><BR/><BR/>*cough*Jeff Jarvis*cough*Charlie Martinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14586506407851173416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post-1132777388970025932005-11-23T13:23:00.000-07:002005-11-23T13:23:00.000-07:00Flenser and MHA,Yes, I too encountered this articl...Flenser and MHA,<BR/><BR/>Yes, I too encountered this article(through reading Den Beste) right after it first appeared. But even before that, I had read a book by Manfred Shroeder, <I>Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws</I>, which is worth the price of admission just to learn, on page 3, about an elegant proof of Pythagoras's theorem proposed by the eleven-year-old Albert Einstein, that argues from a diagram erecting an altitude on the hypotenuse of a right triangle, using the three similar triangles thus constructed, to come up with a formula oddly and eerily isomorphic with Albert's 1905<BR/><BR/>E=mc^2<BR/><BR/>!!!!<BR/><BR/><BR/>;-)<BR/><BR/><BR/>Jamie IronsJamie Ironshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08483791884102487505noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16821859.post-1132775951933755092005-11-23T12:59:00.000-07:002005-11-23T12:59:00.000-07:00Good points.I read Clay Shirky's article years ago...Good points.<BR/><BR/>I read Clay Shirky's article years ago and got fascinated by the Power Distribution, or Zipf Distribution. It is very common and never taught in statistics courses. City populations obey it, record popularity obeys it, movie popularity obeys it.MeaninglessHotAirhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11767916621253839341noreply@blogger.com