Raising the exponent on Shirky’s Power Law

I am a little bit concerned about the effect that Web 2.0 is going to have on the variety of information that people find on the Internet. Clay Shirky wrote Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality to show how only a few websites get most of the traffic. As a Futurist I am always looking for unique things, trends that no one thinks is a trend yet. If I depended entirely on the Web 2.0 sites that vote on the most popular things I will only be seeing what everyone else is seeing. Sure, what you are looking at is the hottest thing, but you don’t need a Futurist to tell you that. So, if you want to be like everyone else, click on the most popular links. If you want to see what’s on the fringe you are going to have to be a little more creative in how you find your information.