MIS 373 – Social Networking

The Long Tail &

The Power Law

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

Power Law Distributions

• Occur in socio-technical systems

• Very different from bell curve distributions

• Examples include traffic to internet sites, weblog readership, page views, content downloads, etc.

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

Weblogs arranged by #of inbound links.

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

All mailing lists in the Yahoo Groups Television (ranked by number of subscribers)

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

LiveJournal users ranked by number of friends listed.

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

Dynamics of Social Systems• When many people express their preferences

among many options inequalities arise

• Most elements are below average

• As the number of option rises, the curve becomes more extreme

• People are affected by others

• Any tendency towards agreement in diverse and free systems creates power law distributions

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

Is this Inequality Fair?

• What is the cost of failure?

• Are there talented people who don’t get the traffic they deserve?

• Are new users more likely to go to top sites or to niche places?

• Will the gap between the most and least popular increase or decrease?

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

But is Small Necessarily Bad?• When most creators/contributors get below average

traffic, audience size cannot be the only metric of success

• Publishing a self-made video and having only twenty random people watch is disappointing

• But publishing a video of Lola’s first birthday and getting comments from twenty of your best friends and family feels great

• The larger you get the more you resemble big media because you can no longer hold personal conversations

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

Information Systems Today: Managing in the Digital World 5-9

The Long Tail vs. The Fat Middle

• Traditional storeso Focus on

mainstream needso Target the average

customero E.g., Blockbuster

• E-Tailerso Can focus on niche

marketso E.g., Netflix

Everything has an Audience

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

The Long Tail: Stocking Up

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

Making Money from Everything

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

LT: Information Sharpens Taste

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill

Net Neutrality

• Data sent over the Internet is handled in a neutral manner

• All traffic treated the same way

• ISPs and telephone companies argue for prioritizationo Traditional Internet traffic suffers due to high

bandwidth applications (esp video content)o Should YouTube have to pay for bandwidth use or

get deprioritized? o Multi-tier Broadband consumer plans?

MIS 373 - Social Networking, SP09, Cho, Lang, McCaskill