Experience versus talent shapes the structure of the Web

: Investigates the intricate interplay between experience or entitlement of web pages (defined by the number of inbound hyperlinks a page already has), and inherent talent or fitness of the pages (defined by the likelihood that someone visiting the page would give a hyperlink to it) and the continual high rates of birth and death of web pages. By using sequential large-scale crawl data, finds that the web is conservative in judging talent and the overall fitness distribution is exponential, showing low variability. The small variance in talent, however, is enough to mean that new and novel pages grow quickly and surpass older pages. In this regard, the Internet mimics meritocracies: entitlement continues to rule, but there is just enough room for talent to also join the ranks of leadership.