Danah Boyd has written about link bias using a random smaple. Although she says that her conclusions are not firm enough to be called findings, they provide good indicators into some online behaviours.
Looking at the Technorati 100, many of which are group blogs, often with some financial incentive she concludes that regardless of the algorithm, where there is an advantage to being in the ‘top’ lisitng, people will try and manipulate the algorthm.
On Mary Hodder’s thoughts,
While i’ve been looking into the linking patterns, Mary Hodder has been thinking through new metrics for measurement. These are very important but not because one is better than the other. In fact, if we all switched to any of her metrics, we’d have just as many biases as we have now. And many of the Top blogs would try to figure out how to get rank in that system. The significance lies in the ability to offer choice.
Choice is the key – different ways ot look at what is there.
