J. Jeffrey Hanson

I read an interesting article today on the Wall Street Journal web site. It discussed the merits (or lack of merits) of popularity rankings, specifically as they relate to online news articles. One statement from the article seemed to me to describe the changes taking place right now concerning lifestreaming and/or social streaming. The complete statement (referring to a quote from Matthew Salgarik, a co-author of a study on popularity in the music world) reads, “Deducing merit from popularity can lead to self-reinforcing snowballs of popularity…These snowballs can grow much larger than their competitors, leading to winner-take-all markets.” This statement is not all that surprising, however, it does point out very effectively how a wave of popularity can carry a given product or service, no matter how valuable or important, to the top of its class.

The transformation that is taking place across the Internet from a page model to a real-time stream model will surely be affected by this popularity phenomenon. Enterprises must be ready to embrace this new model and plan their web presence accordingly or be swept aside by the ever-changing waves of popularity.