Patrick has a long, good post on the 80/20 rule, networks and structure. Good read if you want to think about how it relates to networks. Shannen is living proof of the small world that Watts and Barabási discuss, while Kate engages with the long tail and its relation to economics. Holly applies all this to the recent election battle over Indi (Obama also cracked this with his first campaign, which everyone has been trying to imitate ever since), which is very much long tail and relied heavily on social media resources. Lina highlights a very important passage about how linking is not random, In the very simple example from the unsymposium even in writing an academic essay in hypertext linking is not random as a result is both a power law distribution, and a meaningful structure. Lina 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.