Viewing the World Wide Web as a river network

in which web pager 

are the confluences,

hyperlinks are the channels, 

and clickstreams

showing the navigation users 

from one website to another 

are the water flows.

In this way we can model 

the flow of human attention 

in a weighted,  direct network 

comparable to transportation networks 

in organisms or ecosystems.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.6097