Slashdot: 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.
This is interesting! A few years ago, we heard that Amazon.com and many other e-tailers would not be able to achieve good profit margins on the web, because the competition is just a simple mouse-click away. Then we heard about "mind-share". Now, we hear that because of a "power law", or "winners take all", or "rich get richer", that Amazon.com has a huge market share, and that it will be difficult for any competitor to dislodge them. Sounds like a 180-degree turn from the original thinking of the web.
Posted by Doug Sauder at April 19, 2002 12:38 AM