Information Cascade and Celebrity Endorsement
https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2018/11/07/taylor-swift-bredesen-endorsement-tennessee-senate-race-political-post/1918440002/ Celebrities; the ultimate influencers. Belle Delphine sold out on $30 bottles of her own bath water, while Kylie Jenner got people to start a GoFundme to help her reach a net worth of $1 billion. What gives celebrities the power to be the gatekeepers of our opinions and are there some behaviors we wouldn’t […]
The Waze-ification of the Physical World
The Waze-ification of the Physical World This article describes a growing trend of transforming products into social networks that can reap the benefits of the network effect. The main product it examines is Waze, a GPS navigation application that relies on inputs from its users to display realtime traffic, accidents, and even police sightings. The […]
No More Likes
This article is one of many announcing that Instagram has removed visible “like” counts from its platform. It focuses on the ways in which the removal of likes will hopefully benefit the mental health of users and encourage people to post more creative content. If users aren’t worried about how others will perceive their like […]
TikTok Is Rewriting the World
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html https://www.oberlo.com/blog/tiktok-statistics TikTok is an app for making and sharing short videos. TikTok acts as a social network, where videos cover a wide range of categories, from lip-syncing to comedic skits to viral challenges. It is easy to make a video on TikTok, users have all sorts of tools at their disposal including filters and […]
Decision ‘cascades’ in social networks
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141222131551.htm In the article, Decision ‘cascades’ in social networks, co-author Flavio Chierichetti studies how people are influenced by each others decisions in social networks, resulting in a behavior of choices that cause a cascade of decisions. Chierichetti states that to fully understand behavior spreading through the entire network, is that we must “understand how the […]
Prediction Markets in Trump’s Impeachment and the 2020 election
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/these-gamblers-are-putting-money-on-the-outcome-of-the-impeachment-inquiry/2019/11/13/da535bee-f0f6-11e9-b648-76bcf86eb67e_story.html This article analyzes the effectiveness of prediction markets, specifically in regards to Trump’s impeachment and the 2020 election. “When people have a little skin in the game, they are more likely to distill facts from fiction and discount fake news,” says PredictIt co-founder John Phillips. “The theory here is that markets can be effective […]
Event Planning & Network Effects
Being a member of organizations can be extremely beneficial towards a holistic education. However, this benefit comes with the frequent responsibility of event planning. In my instance, I was given the task of organizing a 50-person trip to a Buffalo Bills game. Because of the expenses that arise when planning such a trip—Tickets, Transportation, food/drinks—it […]
Clash of Clans: Network Effects and Stickiness in Mobile Gaming
https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/clash-of-clans-network-effects-and-stickiness-in-mobile-gaming/ Clash of Clans is a freemium game that has been around for many years. Because it is a social game, network effects are present in the way the game operates. One of the main features in the game are the clans themselves. There are many benefits to being in these clans, such as troop […]
Pressure to Follow the Crowd
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejsp.2499 When individuals are faced with decisions, their tendency is to follow the crowd, which could easily be the wrong decision. The link above gives a clear explanation about some of the cons of following the crowd. The link describes how people believe they have free will depending on what they think about their […]
Bayes’ Rule and Baseball?
The World Series: What the Luck? We often think of sports as being showcases for individuals’ talents and as opportunities to see who is the best. Whether it be an individual or a team, professional championships are seen as the be all and end all of who the best of the best is for that […]
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