The Smart Grid: an improvement on the network structure of the power grid
While browsing and reading through many of the blogs previously written by students, I was surprised by the fact that not too many people have talked about, or mentioned, one of the largest (and I would argue the most important) network system in modern culture: the power grid. Without it, you would not be reading […]
Tracking Supply and Demand with Facebook Ads
One of the most interesting metrics that can be tracked is Facebook’s recommended CPC (cost-per-click) bid. Facebook offers a suggested bid based on the demographics you have selected. Naturally, demographics where there is more ‘supply’ and less ‘demand’ will be cheaper and vice versa. For example, if you wanted to target a large age group […]
Network Structure of Google+’s “Ripples”
http://social-dynamics.org/tag/cascades/
http://gizmodo.com/5854224/what-is-google-ripples
“Google Bombs” explode, then diffused
PageRank, Google’s algorithm that numerically represents the importance of a webpage, is a system that has changed the face of the Internet. Quantifying the relevance of a web page based on content, PageRanks are determined by the other webpages linked to them (and their PageRanks). Understanding the way search engines work is an incredibly valuable […]
Crowd Funding and Social Networks
While we are all familiar with using social networks to connect with friends, a growing number of investors and entrepreneurs are turning to these networks to sell equity stakes in their companies. This process, known as crowd funding, can be a vital source of capital for firms looking to avoid registering with the SEC. Last […]
Social Media Advertising
While Google ads most definitely get a lot of attention when discussing online advertising, we cannot possibly overlook perhaps one of the most prevalent online advertising schemes- Facebook ads. These ads are sometimes hidden to the eye of someone looking for the traditional online ad format. Facebook ads are simply fan pages or “like” pages […]
Tie-Strength and Butler Lies
Earlier in the class, we talked in length about networks and their structure. Throughout our discussion of networks we analyzed the importance of tie strength between nodes. We used this information to evaluate who would be most likely to next be connected (principle of strong triadic closure) and giant strongly connected components. However, we never looked in-depth […]
Search engine censorship
Currently, Google is undoubtedly the largest and most powerful search engine in the world; however, this advantage may turn into disadvantage in some cases when the results of a search are affected by various government-related factors. That means that the search results, which may otherwise be shown, are deliberately excluded. This suppression may be local […]
Online Advertising: Ignorance is not bliss.
Why Online Advertising should be regulated? http://www.adexchanger.com/the-debate/why-regulated/ Can we move fast enough to keep up? Online advertising is moving…faster than lightening. We can see personalized ads above our Gmail, on Facebook, practically everywhere we go now. There are even ads that follow you after you leave such as on Zappos. The feeling that these ads […]
Neural Networks
After our discussions about the web and how it is composed of directed edges and has strongly connected components, I could not help but relate this to biology and neural networks. Even though neural networks are quite complicated, they share many properties with the model we discussed for the web. First of all, neurons with […]
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