Last week at Hypertext, Dame Wendy Hall
Reminded us of what we might forget:
The Web is large and new, it flourishes,
It seems to go from strength to strength, and yet
We do not know how strong it really is.
We must remember that we still could wreck the web.

A cheerful Jakob Nielsen once forecast 
That the web's early froth would soon subside
And leave us with a few large sites that would
Provide the stuff that common readers want,
Leaving the failed and unsuccessul sites
Unfrequented, unvisited, to wither on the vine.

We do expect some noise because you can't
Have half a visit. Readers are discrete
Like cars upon the road. At the high-traffic bound
This doesn't matter much. But at the low
Each choice turns out to matter that much more.

Poisson first studied this, and the key thing
To know is the expected variance 
Is just the mean; so if the mean is N
The variance is N as well, and so:
Look at our logs. We observe -- especially 
In the tail -- a lot more noise than this.

Poisson assumes that no one interacts.
But if we interact the noise may change.
If our cars hit the brake in traffic, we
First find that clumps and traffic jams
Increase the noise. 

The noise can go down, too,
As here, where traffic is so dense 
That by the time they reach our sampling zone
The cars have all assumed a common speed and spacing.

The same result is found for better models.
Here independent browsers move through space
Indifferent to what other browsers do.  

But here, instead, these readers flock together,
Following their whim unless they see a friend
Nearby, but clinging to their closest friend
If any wanders past.

	We may distinguish here
The HERD, in which a pundit does decide
Where everyone should go, from what I here
Propose, a simple FLOCK, where no one is in charge
Yet nonetheless these organized behaviors do emerge.

Temporal correlation boosts the noise as when
A classroom full of students visits you today
Because a visit to your website was assigned. 
They won't be back today. A year from now
The next year's class may visit you again. 

Some of you may know that for quite a few years
I've worked as a publisher of hypertext fiction.
We  once were the darling of postmodern critics,
And later the –  something  – despised by their rivals.

I mention this story not just for your sympathy
(Though that's always welcome) but rather because
I want to distinguish the high modern fiction
We publish at Eastgate from broader concerns
For narrative that I've expressed in the paper.

People like stories, we all want to know
What happens next. We'll tune in tomorrow
To learn how things went, to hear of our friends –
Even our friends whom we don't really know,
Even our friends who don't really exist:
Especially our friends who may not be real.

We visit tomorrow to see how things went,
Perhaps we might mention the case to some friends,
Or write a short note in our weblog about it.
Either way, herd or flock, stories focus the web.

A simple test-tube blogosphere  
Will quickly illustrate
The dangers our sites face when they 
Confront the lower bound.

To start, we have some sites. 
Each has N outbound links
To other sites they like or use 
For regular updates.

Each day, each writer chooses 
A few links to pursue
And Markovly they follow up 
To see what might be new.

Sometimes, a site discovered  
Is added to its list.
And we might sometimes take a look 
At sites that links to us.

When links are sparse and logs ignored, it's true
That nearly all the traffic goes to some successful sites.
The others publish links to what they read 
	– just like the rest;
The sites that still have traffic are in red, the rest are blue.

A site that has no links no longer can be found,
And so, quite soon what once was our long tail
Decays to form a grim but stable web
In just the way that Nielsen once foretold.

Static, dreary, dull and dead: our tail
Is now no longer long. What can we do
To shake things up? Our bloggers might pursue
Some inbound links discovered in their logs.

Googling one's self would also do the trick,
Or keyword search, or even buying ads.
The same grim logic holds: our tail again grows short. 
But now a site, though blue, can rise again 
To shine in splendid redness for a time. 

If links are sparse, even the lucky rich
May fall from grace and hear the baying hound,
That grim, unlucky reaper: the zero lower bound.

Add more links, we're better off.
This observation is not new:
Its why we study hypertext.

Mindless link farms dont help much,
And simply linking’s not enough
Since if we hit the zero lower bound
Our site turns blue, and our mood blues too.

The hope here is, add links enough
And readers too: you still might lose
The longest part of the long tail.....

...But still retain a vibrant "middle class"
Of many sites too busy to endure
That fatal time of loss, but which
Need not consolidate – or anyway
That won't collapse right now.

As you've forseen, if we provide more links
And use our logs to rediscover sites
About lost love, the plate that time forgot,
Or synthesis of octatetraenes:
Whatever floats your boat: as you expect
The genre tropes that shape this talk compell
Our problems are resolved – and all is well.

So: we need lots of links, and backlinks too,
if we are not to wreck that fragile Web.
And have we links enough? Is our familiar Web
That final, happy Web that we just saw? 
Or have we launched downhill? How can we tell
What we've already lost?

	My second point: those links
Shape stories, expectations that – when violated 
   as I'm doing right now – drive our readers mad.
Fiction and rhetoric are not artistic toys:
They are the raw material with which Web Science works.

Thank you!