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Information Cascade in Music

This summer, I attended Jon Kleinberg’s lecture entitled, “What Facebook, Amazon and Google teach us about society and about ourselves,” which described the appearance of large networks and how information flowed through them. During the lecture, he brought up a very interesting study of popular songs in music-sharing websites which created “alternate reality.”  This was […]

Mario and Pikachu, Jump to iPhone App Now!..Or not…

So, if you happen to be a nerd like me who loves Pokémon games and happen to own an apple product, you also must have wondered why Pokémon iPod app version never came out. Well that’s probably because Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, has declared that as long as he is in charge, the […]

Google+ and Network Effects

Google+ is the site belonging to the search engine of the same name, and it’s purpose was presumably to compete with the social networking giant Facebook. However, for a number of reasons, the site has not been nearly as successful as facebook. If we time to be the price people pay to use the site, […]

Why People Choose iPhone over Other Smartphones

http://www.newgadget.org/technology/top-3-reasons-why-people-choose-iphone-over-other-phones/   The article suggests three reasons why people decide to use iPhone over other smartphones. The first reason is that the iPhone is an Apple product, and people all around the world have confidence that their investment will not be “defaulted” since Apple is a globally established corporation. The second point is that iPhone […]

How an Information Cascade Could Tear Down the Great Firewall of China

The freedom to speak, write, post, and blog about almost anything we want, what we’re thinking, how we’re feeling, is such a common practice in the United States that we often take it for granted. We all freely post our thoughts and opinions on Facebook or Twitter, and many write columns or blogs to voice […]

The movie that was watched “ironically”

What better way to advertise a movie than through parodies, allusions, video games and Jon Stewart references? Whatever your opinion, this is exactly what saved the potential failure known as Snakes on a Plane. In fact, New Line Cinema took their viral marketing efforts to a new level, by creating a promotional sweepstakes on the […]

Outtweeting the Twitterers–Predicting Information Cascades in Microblogs

Outtweeting the Twitterers – Predicting Information Cascades in Microblogs   http://www.usenix.org/event/wosn10/tech/full_papers/Galuba.pdf   This article overviews an experiment done to see the pattern of information cascades through Twitter. The experiment is based on looking at patterns of how URLs are “retweeted” throughout the popular microblog Twitter. By looking at the acquired information, the results may be […]

Google Plus is on the Wrong End of Network Effects

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/11/google_had_a_chance_to_compete_with_facebook_not_anymore_.html Writer Farhad Manjoo (of Slate.com) is certain that Google Plus has missed its opportunity to establish itself as a major contender in the social networking market. And by “major contender” I mean a competitor of Facebook of course. Manjoo believes that one of the major reasons that Google Plus is doomed is because it […]

Success of New Products: Getting Over the Tipping Point

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2006/tc20060629_411177.htm There are many factors that contribute to the popularity of a product; one key component that was discussed in class was the number of users already using the product, because people judge products in an environment with network effects. The article was about Google and its initial stage of product launching a couple years […]

Network Effects on Facebook

http://www.kottke.org/09/01/facebooks-valuation-and-the-network-effect The above blog post applies the idea of network effects to one of the largest “networks” in the world: facebook. Like we learned in class, the author explains that the value of facebook to it’s users depends on the number of people that use it. The post examines  a 2009 facebook application released by […]

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