Using popularity rankings to make decisions, however, has downsides. These online rankings are public, creating a positive-feedback loop. The more popular something becomes, even if just from a random burst of interest, the more likely it is to grow ever more popular. And that has troubling implications about the effects of all sorts of popularity rankings, from bestseller charts to election polls. Frequently, popularity rankings speak less to the merits of what’s being observed and more to the fact that crowds are observing it. In other words, peer pressure. “If you see a crowd around a building, you pop over and see what everyone is looking at,” says Jimmy Leach, editorial director for digital at the Independent newspaper in the U.K.
— WSJ.com, ironically I found this on Techmeme, which is described as “Techmeme spotlights the hottest tech stories from all around the web on a single page.”
