Power Law on Digg, Reddit, etc.

Digg and Reddit are sites that would most certainly exhibit some kind of pattern very similar to the power law.

For those that aren't familiar with Digg and Reddit, they are sites where users can submit links to news articles, images, videos, anything really, and then people vote for or against them. As entries gain popularity, it would then be featured on the main page. Users can also sort the entries by how long ago it was submitted and/or how popular it is.

I am not a heavy user of such sites, but when I do use them, I tend to only view the top 10 or 20 entries. And for the ones that I liked, I would vote for them. Although I'm not suggesting that all users behave like I do, but it would be a good guess that most users do what I do. As such, it would make the popularity of the entries follow the power law.

Although no one has done any formal study into this matter, here's a well written article using Game Theory and Information Cascade to explain Digg.

Article: "Digg as a Game"
Links: Digg, Reddit.