A long article by Clay Shirky about Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality has been creating a great buzz in BlogLand these days (see insteresting reactions by Dave Winer or Mark Pilgrim)
While I find interesting the observation about power laws on a wide range of community as BBSs, mail-list, newsgroup and websites compared to weblogs I notice that a real serach for causes of inequality is missing. Clay observes that for the sole reason that a first blogger is linked by a second blogger, a third blogger is inducted in linking the first one.
This of course can lead to a sort of “automatic fame” in a pyramidal way but it misses a point: the content of the majoriry of the bloggers' posts is news.
News are not in an infinite number every day (even though there are many) so when the well-known bloggers have posted the same news references the game is over, at least for newbies. Lazyness, shyness and other reasons prevent the less-known blogger to say something new, to search for a not-so-referenced news or to create something original, even only by commenting that news.
In other words, being a blogger means having something to say and it is not so easy when the blogger world is so largely populated and you are a newcomer. News aggregators are a great tools but often they could transform you in a mere news-firer, not an original content producer.
This is why I mean my blog as my personal notebook, for 3, 5 or 3500 readers, it doesn't matter 🙂