Same as we can't analyze how influential someone's writing is without accounting for the effect the writing has on the subsequent writing of those who have viewed it. Some npubs may be very high-visibility, but have little influence, and vice-versa.
nostr:npub1m3xdppkd0njmrqe2ma8a6ys39zvgp5k8u22mev8xsnqp4nh80srqhqa5sf you were talking about how we could analyze this, right?
similar phenomenon in music too. Some of the biggest artists by record sales had relatively little influence while some niche ones with cult followings had massive.
But I do think nostr due to lack of algos and centralized thumbing the scale is already way better at surfacing interesting posts from anyone than the legacy social platforms.
Things tend to be popular because they offend nobody, not because they inspire anybody.
Niche music shifts the artistic Overton window and then more-popular musicians adopt a sanitized version for the masses.
You can observe the same thing on here. Some npubs are unpopular, but constantly shift the window and have enough readers to demand a response of some kind. The responses to their notes often get more play than their notes do, but they're effectively driving the conversation through novelty.
That could be mapped. You'd see waves of responses and speech patterns rippling out from their notes.
That would also catch air replies, by the way. You would be able to see the connection through the content of the note.
Nostr is actually much more centralized than legacy platforms, in practice, as there is no mitigating effect to counter the name recognition some npubs have when they arrive here, and so many people are only here to read what some particular person or persons writes. It's mostly a collection of fan clubs.
Discoverability of material is an effect of overt human reactions, so that creates a permanent vacuum to the same handful of npubs, as they have fan clubs who react as a sort of homage ritual.
