Netflix shows are not made equal. As the company’s recent viewing report states, “the top 1 percent of titles accounted for about 22.32 billion hours of viewing, almost 24 percent of the total. The top 10 percent brought in 68 percent of all viewing – 64.16 billion hours.”
Power laws in the wild
A lot do a little and a little do a lot – and a reminder that averages are often meaningless.
OnlyFans pays out $7 billion to its content creators, but the split is far from even. The top 1% of accounts make 33% of all the money and the top 10% of accounts make 73%.
1% of Reddit communities start 74% of all conflicts. As Ethan Decker puts it, “most people, most of the time, are mostly good.” It’s also a reminder that opinions on social media don’t reflect the general population.
Only 2% of Spotify artists earn more than $1k a year.
Big supermarkets sell over 40,000 products, but they’re not made the same: the top 300 account for 25% of sales. (If you’re interested, bananas and milk are usually bought most often).
97% of tweets come from one quarter of all accounts.
The richest tenth of UK households holds over 40% of wealth (though income is distributed more evenly).
Across all types of video watching, some people watch a lot and a lot watch a little.
On YouTube, fame is not the norm: a tiny proportion of channels (<1%) have more than a million subscribers.