Power Laws
Something called Sifry’s Alerts has a very complicated response to Shirkey that may or may not effectively rebut Shirkey, because the math escapes me. (Well, okay, it’s just slopes. But still.) He makes a persuasive case that Shirkey’s Power Laws aren’t immutable because a group of people can get together and make a newcomer’s blog more popular and scheme not to list the “big” bloggers on their blogrolls. Fine. But, even then, it’s more likely that it’ll be a newcomer that started yesterday than one that starts tomorrow.
