I was just writing up another post, and came across this paragraph that I just had to share about the nature of the blogosphere:

weblogs are part of an ecosystem (sometimes annoyingly referred to as the Blogosphere). This means that whatever good postings exist are promoted through links from other sites. More reader/writers see this good stuff, and the very best then get linked to even more. As a result, link frequency follows a Zipf distribution, with disproportionally more links to the best postings. - Jakob Nielsen

I think this is a really good way to explain the social nature of the blogosphere to a business person. I studied business for many years and I know from experience in classes and in reading case studies that explaining something statistically adds power, and sometimes understanding, to a statement.

What I see here is something with descriptive power. If you are trying to explain why trackbacks and permalinks have value, and how they relate to SEO and creating dialogues between bloggers, this is the most simplistic and powerful statement I’ve ever come across. To say that, simply, “good stuff” gets “promoted through links” and then follows a distribution where some things get relatively more interest than others… this has intuitive power.

Great observation Jakob!