Mike Arauz is a strategist at Visualizing The Network Structure of the Internet
The most important difference between small websites and big websites is not their number of visitors, but rather the interconnectedness of those visitors.
Like a scene out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," I've been staring at a sketch of this diagram in my notebook for the past few weeks, mumbling "I think this means something..." to myself as I ride the subway each morning.
In this overly simplistic diagram, the big white circles represent random websites. And the smaller black circles represent individuals who visit those websites, and are connected to other people who visit those websites. They are divided into strata based on the size of the website.
Inspired by Tim Malbon's excellent post, The Web as a Column of The Ocean, I started to think about the different environments in which digital experiences live. For those of us in the business of designing online experiences, I think it helps to be aware of the context of an experience within the internet as a whole.
I started by describing the types of websites you would find at different levels:
As I visualized these different strata of websites the network structure of the visitors started becoming clear.
As we explore and discover information and content on the web, what is the likelihood that a group of people pursuing one shared interest will cross paths with a group of people pursuing another shared interest?
This is why things that blow up and become hugely popular on the web do so at the top strata. Because there's so much mixing and overlap. However, the lower strata are crucially important. Because of their more narrow focus and secluded environment, they create a qualitatively different relationship between the explorer and their discovery. Which means more to you personally? Discovering a funny video that's already on the top of the Most Popular page on YouTube? or Finding a funny video on that weird niche blog that none of your friends know about?
Click for full size image
I think this means something... I'm not sure what all the implications of this framework are, but I plan on spending the rest of this week on my blog exploring the possibilities.
I'd love to hear your first impressions, and what it means to you. Comments welcome.
Like a scene out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," I've been staring at a sketch of this diagram in my notebook for the past few weeks, mumbling "I think this means something..." to myself as I ride the subway each morning.
In this overly simplistic diagram, the big white circles represent random websites. And the smaller black circles represent individuals who visit those websites, and are connected to other people who visit those websites. They are divided into strata based on the size of the website.
Inspired by Tim Malbon's excellent post, The Web as a Column of The Ocean, I started to think about the different environments in which digital experiences live. For those of us in the business of designing online experiences, I think it helps to be aware of the context of an experience within the internet as a whole.
I started by describing the types of websites you would find at different levels:
- Sites (practically) everyone uses: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Major News Portals, Big Blogs, Conversation and Content Sharing Platforms: NYTimes.com, ESPN, HuffingtonPost, TechCrunch, Photobucket, Flickr, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, etc.
- Community Sites, Forums, and Small Blogs: Fan sites, individual LiveJournals, 4Chan, Delicious, ffffound.com, etc.
- Niche Experiences and Utilities: Single serving sites, tools and downloadable software, sites you probably only visit once.
- Lost and Forgotten: The vast under-sea of abandoned websites (h/t Bud Caddell).
As I visualized these different strata of websites the network structure of the visitors started becoming clear.
As we explore and discover information and content on the web, what is the likelihood that a group of people pursuing one shared interest will cross paths with a group of people pursuing another shared interest?
This is why things that blow up and become hugely popular on the web do so at the top strata. Because there's so much mixing and overlap. However, the lower strata are crucially important. Because of their more narrow focus and secluded environment, they create a qualitatively different relationship between the explorer and their discovery. Which means more to you personally? Discovering a funny video that's already on the top of the Most Popular page on YouTube? or Finding a funny video on that weird niche blog that none of your friends know about?
I think this means something... I'm not sure what all the implications of this framework are, but I plan on spending the rest of this week on my blog exploring the possibilities.
I'd love to hear your first impressions, and what it means to you. Comments welcome.
Monday, June 1, 2009
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4 Comments:
Cool diagram. Reminds me of the schematic representations of the brain in "The Society Of Mind" by Marvin Minsky.
Hi Mike
Neil Perkin ("Dead Fish" fame) directed me any maybe others to your current network piece. It's difficult to know who knows who on the circuit but I wonder if you have read Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore's book Communities Dominate Brands?
http://www.communities_dominate.blogs.com/ Their network formula is based on the convergence of the 4 c's Culture, Community, Commerce and Connectivity. They visualise this as interlocking circles and, further, extol the virtues of alpha users who drive the network especially social networks.
Your diagram makes me feel the single white circles are very lonely and possibly imposed upon from above. It's all visual this stuff as you say. I wonder if websites are where it's at; more likely individual's are the true basis of this system as any blog or twitter is in essence a website. More power to the individual.....
Mike, I think the graphics should look more like this:
1) Towards the top, the white dots should become equal to the black dots.
2) Some of the black dots should become bigger (or simply more important) towards the top.
Let me explain why I think this works better.
A core element of human communication is value-evaluation systems. All day long we do nothing but making choices, selecting from the information we are presented with. As a selection-filter we use our internal value system, a filtering-system we steadily change, adapt and enrich through more experiences.
Prior to the Web's rise, our selection-filter was influenced by reliability, which was commonly based on trust we put in sources with a certain reputation. An article in the New York Times had more weight in our mindset than articles from most other newspapers. I call this the old model.
In the modern model, this filter works differently. Reliability still has a meaning, but the higher the interconnectivity, the higher the equalization of matter (output). Still, if there's mutual agreement of the quality and trustwortiness of a source, its value rises above the level of other sources on the Web.
Before we trust something, we try weighing our understanding against the udnerstanding of whom we accept as the "elders of the Web" (like in a tribe, the trusted, experienced personalities) -- those people who have proven over time that they are capable of recognizing and acknowledging great content.
In the modern model, it has more value if people like Tim O'Reilly, Seth Godin and Jeff Bezos agree on a topic. Of course this trusting policy has been going on for some time, ever since editorial columns and interviewing on TV began. But on the Web, there seems to be a clear tendency towards this modern model. It seems that we may find a lot of things interesting, but only if the right key figures declare its importance (including old media, to a degree), a phenomenon has relevance in our lives. A good example of how this works is the case of Susan Boyle.
I believe our evaluation-model in general, whom we trust and what we find worth following, is in flux, in a state where it tries to adapt to the new model. A shift of balance is happening.
Due to ubiquitious availability of content and sources, and because we are more and more applying a new value-evaluation model to filter trustworthiness, the sources (brands, people, institutions) become more and more equalized. Trusting our evaluation-system, we put more weight into recognition through other sources (interconnectivity, influencial people, brands, institutions etc. say "this is good") than the sender or content itself.
The pure density of interconnectivity rate (more people digg this) is relative or even irrelevant if there are no "elders" confirming a subject's relevance. In a fluctuating process, we kind of counter-check with the "elders" if this is a good information to follow up on. Popular choices (like on Digg) may make something interesting, but they don't make it more relevant.
I think the graphics should show an equalization of white dots towards black dots, along with an increase of interconnectivity. The distinction between sender-reliability and importance in comparison with people acknowledging its importance (through sharing, linking, reporting experiences) is artificial in my opinion. A sender becomes less important, the content and its recognition means more density, hence the density of the upper part is higher. However, some black dots should be bigger than others, because it is not only the mass of density but some key-cells indicating importance. This is probably not unlike how our brain works, where stronger synapses are built with higher interest rate occurring in a particular region of the brain. Key cells as triggers in clusters are also a known factor in networking theory.
These are just thoughts and suggestions. I think you're really onto something.
mike,
well done. i understood the entire post by the initial graphic alone, your words only confirmed what i had already absorbed.
some interesting points by henning, but still, striking idea.
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