Rich Get Richer
This reading compares the Web to the Hollywood acting community. How they both display power law degree distribution. This is explained by the rich get richer phenomenon present in most networks which could be the reason for power laws spotted on the Web and in Hollywood.
With billions of documents available it is hard to believe the Web emerged one node at a time.
It began with one node, Tim Berners-Lee’s famous first Webpage. Then physicists and computer scientists started developing pages of their own and the original site gradually gained links pointing to it.
The idea of nodes and links is compared to the Hollywood boom of actors. Increased demand for motion pictures caused new actors to be introduced. From a tiny cluster of silent actors grew to a gigantic network of over a half a million nodes and continues to grow much like the web.
Its easy to model a growing network, start from a small core and keep adding nodes and each node has links.
The better known the Webpage is the more links point to them, therefore making it easier to find them. These are inevitable the more connected nodes of the Web. Actors with more links have a higher chance of getting new roles, therefore the more links a page has the more popular it will grow.
[…] also has a good introduction to power laws, using bell curves to help think about their difference. Brittany discusses the ‘rich get richer’ reading which is about preferential linking and also the advantages that first movers gain. […]