The Economist takes note of a study entitled "Blogs and the Economics of Reciprocal Attention." Here's the abstract:
We argue in this paper that attention to one's blog is won by paying attention to other bloggers. We derive properties of blogging networks from a model where bloggers trade attention and content. The predictions from the model are then checked against a novel dataset from LiveJournal, a major blogging community. As predicted, the activity of bloggers is found to be related to the size and level of reciprocity within a blogger's relational network. We also find that bloggers who do not adhere to reciprocity norms are sanctioned with a lower number of readers.
In the future, all important research will use LiveJournal as its main dataset, so, I guess, enjoy it while it's still novel. Also, you know, ugh.
