Webwhompers

Two strong and fundamental forces of Web dynamics -- birds of a feather (homophily) and rich get richer (cumulative advantage) -- enhance the likelihood of extreme events at opposite ends of the spectrum from niches to megahits:

• "Birds of a feather" sustains niche items in the long tail of collaborative filtering
• "Rich get richer" launches huge megahits thanks to centrality-based search

The slide show below displays these forces against the backdrop of the long-tail. The last slide in the series depicts the "neglected middle," as described by Cassidy.