Thursday, December 25, 2008

Long tail?


http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10127413-93.html

Another illustration that Search is a winner-takes-all market. This distribution can be explained by users switching their priorities for search engines. Albert-László Barabási writes in Nature ( 435, 207-211 (12 May 2005))
... the main finding is that the observed fat-tailed activity distributions can be explained by a simple hypothesis: humans execute their tasks based on some perceived priority, setting up queues that generate very uneven waiting time distributions for different tasks.
One important question to consider: what does it take for people to re-think their priorities? For example, we can see how high energy prices forced consumers to abandon gas-guzzling trucks. Other examples of massive priority shifts?

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