That study has been very influential to my own thinking about how things get popular. Another thing I found fascinating about the study was that 'quality' of the content did matter, but that it accounted for roughly half the correlation with success, the other half being random-chance snowball effects.
You could probably extend this theory of what makes things successful to a lot of other domains (music, books, fashion, ideas, memes, startups, people...)
However, it's possible the ratio of intrinsic qualities vs extrinsic luck varies or is not 50/50 in all domains.
With music (or books) you have to invest a few minutes or a few hours to really evaluate if you like something, so those factors may affect how much extrinsic "cumulative advatage" snowball effects count vs intrinsic quality.
I'd really like to see more empirical research of how success by "luck vs skill" actually plays out in other categories. Any one know of follow up work to that 2007 study?
It seems like this would be a reason to release more high-quality work rather than fewer excellent quality work. Although perhaps the excellent work would stand out more.
Comments
That study has been very influential to my own thinking about how things get popular. Another thing I found fascinating about the study was that 'quality' of the content did matter, but that it accounted for roughly half the correlation with success, the other half being random-chance snowball effects.
You could probably extend this theory of what makes things successful to a lot of other domains (music, books, fashion, ideas, memes, startups, people...)
However, it's possible the ratio of intrinsic qualities vs extrinsic luck varies or is not 50/50 in all domains.
With music (or books) you have to invest a few minutes or a few hours to really evaluate if you like something, so those factors may affect how much extrinsic "cumulative advatage" snowball effects count vs intrinsic quality.
I'd really like to see more empirical research of how success by "luck vs skill" actually plays out in other categories. Any one know of follow up work to that 2007 study?
It seems like this would be a reason to release more high-quality work rather than fewer excellent quality work. Although perhaps the excellent work would stand out more.