Slashdot has a fascinating article up titled "Censorship by Glut", discussing the results of a social-media/consumer preference/market efficiency type experiment run recently. The experiment featured analysis of user choices of media (in this case songs) in separated "worlds". In most worlds, users could listen to songs, and see how many of a given song their peers had downloaded, but not what people in other "worlds" had chosen. A control "world" had no access to download results from any world.
Apparently the conclusion that underneath a certain quality threshold (or above it, for the bottom of the scale), the results are basically random.

The authors summed it up: "In general, the 'best' songs never do very badly, and the 'worst' songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible." They also noted that in the "social influence" worlds where users could see each others' downloads, increasing download numbers had a snowball effect that widened the difference between the successful songs and the unsuccessful: "We found that all eight social influence worlds exhibit greater inequality -- meaning popular songs are more popular and unpopular songs are less popular -- than the world in which individuals make decisions independently."

The indication that in the larger "middle" section quality has little to do with success throws cold water on the alleged Internet "marketplace of ideas" which many have hung their hats on for years. The self-referencing belief that success indicates quality turns out, in a world where niche markets can number in the millions, to be not so true, should data like this continue to come to light.