Jul
14
When I read Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, I felt strongly that I am to work towards being a “connector” or a “hub,” one who brings people and organizations together. I’m beginning to look at my life differently after reading this book.
Purpose:
How is everything connected to everything else?
What does it mean for science, business and everyday life?
Central Message:
The Nature of Networks
Barabasi, a physicist, discovered that networks use logarithmic distribution, highly-linked nodes grow faster, and networks undergo phase transitions.
- Logarithmic Distribution: Instead of random distribution or bell curve distributions, the distribution of links in a network is determined by logarithmic power laws. If you remember log tables from math, log numbers increase by powers of ten. 2 is ten times larger than 1, 3 is 100 times larger than 1, and so on. This means some nodes have all the links and most nodes only have a few links.
Earthquakes are measured by log numbers: A magnitude 2.0 is ten times more severe than a magnitude 1.0, a 3.0 is 100 times stronger, and so on.
On the web, the top websites have ten times more links than the next set, 100 times more links than the third set, and 1,000 times more links than the fourth set. Google’s Page Ranking technology is based on log distribution. A website with Google PageRank 5 (PR5) is ten times bigger than a website with PR4, 100x a PR3, 1,000X a PR2, and 10,000X a PR1 website.
This means the third link at Google is only going to get 1/1,000th the number of visits compared to #1. If you continue down the list, it’s extremely unlikely that #25 will get any traffic at all. This works with practically everything on websites: a few pages of a website get most of the visits, most of the searches are based on a few keywords, and so on. They are all based on log number distributions.
For example, if you are using Google Adwords for advertising, then you must bid enough to be in the top three positions. Lower than that, you will get very little traffic. - Big Nodes Grow Faster: As new nodes enter the network, they are more likely to link to highly-linked nodes than low-link nodes, because the highly-linked nodes are easier to reach, because they are highly linked. This feedback loop gives preference to the large nodes. Namely, the rich get richer. Networks grow according to the 80/20 rule. Barabasi calls this “preferential linking.”
- Networks undergo phase transition. This means that when a critical threshold (the tipping point) is crossed, the all of the nodes undergo a phase transition and starts acting as a single entity. The property of the network is shared among all nodes in the network. For example, when you boil water, the water acts like ordinary water as it heats up. But at some point, all of the water suddenly starts to boil. There is no “low temperature boiling” or localized boiling. In terms of web markets, there can be a number of dotcoms that are selling dogfood, and at first, the various websites will be different. But when the market niche crosses a certain size, a few of the dotcoms become very large (the 20%) and the remainder (80%) stay same. But they all take on the properties of the group: they all adapt the same general standards.
http://www.andreas.com/faq-barabasi.html
Validations:
Applications:
- Companies that pursue a “business is war” model will be at a self-inflicted disadvantage. They create few links, newcomers don’t link to them, business cycle downturns leave them stranded, and so on.
- Companies that embed themselves into the social network of an industry by creating lots of contacts (links) to other companies, suppliers, industry magazines, customers, government, and workers will grow, because the node with the most links will get more links. At some point, the industry (the network) will undergo a phase transition from “just a bunch of separate companies” into an industry. The core companies become institutionalized and they own the industry. Their internal standards become the industry’s standard. Pareto’s 80/20 Rule applies and the 20% will get 80% of the revenues. Due to the law of preferential linking, newcomers will be effectively locked out of the industry.
Value:
Barabasi feels like Networks will be the central science of the 21st century.