Of Power Laws & The Pod Squad
I was listening to the GeekNewsCentral Podcast from December 14th and he made mention of something that crossed my mind a few times relating the governing Power Laws of social software/movements/revolutions.
As a refresher, let's first get a definition for what exactly the Power Law is:
Power law distributions, the shape that has spawned a number of catch-phrases like the 80/20 Rule and the Winner-Take-All Society, are finally being understood clearly enough to be useful. For much of the last century, investigators have been finding power law distributions in human systems. The economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that wealth follows a "predictable imbalance", with 20% of the population holding 80% of the wealth. The linguist George Zipf observed that word frequency falls in a power law pattern, with a small number of high frequency words (I, of, the), a moderate number of common words (book, cat cup), and a huge number of low frequency words (peripatetic, hypognathous). Jacob Nielsen observed power law distributions in web site page views, and so on.
We are all so used to bell curve distributions that power law distributions can seem odd. The shape of Figure #1, several hundred blogs ranked by number of inbound links, is roughly a power law distribution. Of the 433 listed blogs, the top two sites accounted for fully 5% of the inbound links between them. (They were InstaPundit and Andrew Sullivan, unsurprisingly.) The top dozen (less than 3% of the total) accounted for 20% of the inbound links, and the top 50 blogs (not quite 12%) accounted for 50% of such links.
We have an interesting opportunity now, as we see the rise of Podcasting, to actually watch and observe exactly the types of pound this initially flat piece of metal into the oh-so-familiar curve.
So back to the thoughts that got me onto this. Last night I was explaining to a friend that currently, the Podcasting space is still relatively new and the requirements of those that want to "succeed" (apply any definition you want here) in a significant way is maximized if they can dig in now.
Adam Curry is widely identified as the "Podfather", the guy that got it started. I know from hearing Adam and Dave Winer speaking, most recently on the Trade Secrets Podcast, however, that it was more a collaboration between the two of them. As a result of this founding role in the process, Curry is also quite often called upon for interviews and articles on this new toy, as his probably should be.
The dilemma for other Podcasters, however, is the Pod Squad. The Pod Squad is a group of Podcasts that Curry "runs with". Collectively, they seem to provide extensive cross-linking between each other and hardly ever skip an episode without mentioning each other. Naturally this serves to reinforce the reputations and listenership of all the members of the squad.
Now I won't presume to judge any of the content in the Pod Squad (though I think it is good stuff on the whole). Unfortunately, the Pod Squad is not everyone (the Podosphere if you will), but instead this small group. To the hard working, aspiring Podcaster, however, the Pod Squad can also feel exclusionary just as much as it serves as a point of inspiration. Ask most Podcasters if they would like to be on the "inside" and surely they would agree.
But the problem with the Pod Squad is not that they've formed a group that works together. The main issue is that the leader of the group also is the most quoted. As a result, when Curry's quoted and people research who he listens to, they tend to find the others in the top.
I certainly don't think this is particularly deliberate (as in Adam is trying to only see certain people succeed). It is, though, a tell-tale sign of the Power Law starting to curl. The main question now is, "Is it too late?"
I would argue that it's most certainly not and would not discourage anyone from trying out Podcasting. The scary part, however, is that this curve seems to be accelerating towards its destined form very quickly. There are going to be many more stars borne from Podcasting and I recommend anyone who wants that should start yesterday.