Long-term trends of diversity online
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Ever since the web began, the number of websites has been growing exponentially. These websites cover an ever-increasing range of online services that fill a variety of social and economic functions across a growing range of industries. Yet the networked nature of the web, combined with the economics of preferential attachment, increasing returns and global trade, suggest that over the long run a small number of competitive giants are likely to dominate each functional market segment, such as search, retail and social media. Here we perform a large scale longitudinal study to quantify the distribution of attention given in the online environment to competing organizations. In two large online social media datasets, containing more than 10 billion posts and spanning more than a decade, we tally the volume of external links posted towards the organizations' main domain name as a proxy for the online attention they receive. Our analysis shows that despite the fact that we observe consistent growth in all the macro indicators – the total amount of online attention, in the number of organizations with an online presence, and in the functions they perform – we also observe that a smaller number of organizations account for an ever-increasing proportion of total user attention, usually with one large player dominating each function. These results highlight how evolution of the online economy involves innovation, diversity, and then competitive dominance.
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