Both the internet and things like the community of blogs are both scale free in the sense that they have the same structure whether they are small or large or very large. The distribution of the number of connections in a scale free network follows a power law curve. This means that there are always some who are very highly connected, have many network connections, and there are many who do not have many network connections. You can demonstrate empirically that the number of connections of blogs follows this particular distribution. This is supported by the structure of visibility, where those that are visible, those that "have", tend to get more. Bloggers who are visible tend to become more visible, and those that are not visible don’t tend to get more visible.

There are many mechanisms that support the structure of the long tail. This means that, just as there is strong centralisation of influence in the broadcast media world, there are now a small number of bloggers who are highly visible and influential. This happens because people look to the lead bloggers, continually reference them and accentuate their visibility.

The social news sites are not about people writing. They are about people submitting and voting on what they see as relevant. So what we tend to see is that there are relatively few people who are both scouring for and submitting these newsworthy articles. These tend to be the ones that gain the most visibility.

MO: Yes, that’s very interesting what you have just told me, that it is in fact the people who are submitting, not necessarily the ones who are writing, and so, an opinion isn’t necessarily needed to become visible, but that one can find something interesting and put it out there. Am I right in thinking that?

RD: That’s right, there is this new role, which is being recognised and even beginning to be rewarded, which is those people who discover and put forward those things that are interesting.

MO: But would I also be right in thinking that the people who are respected within the blogosphere, who in fact do write but topics, who are becoming more visible, and you seem to suggest that this visibility sort of perpetuates itself - the more visible one becomes, the more visible again one becomes. That this perpetuated visibility lets one work one’s way up towards the pinnacle of the long tail, by networking.

RD: Yes, as I said this structure of the long tail will be maintained, some with many links and many with few links.

MO: And about the conversations that are happening online, could you tell me perhaps a little bit about the ways in which one can capitalise on them, if in fact one can? Do you think there are ways that will perhaps emerge, maybe that aren’t prevalent at the moment but ways that will become evident. That here is a market? If one is a person who links and interacts with the right people and has conversations with the people who are the opinion leaders or the people who submitting. And by linking to them, networking with them, that somehow one can capitalise on that?

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