Why Apple is So Successful: Looking at Network Effects
Apple dominates the market for non-PC devices with products such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod, so it’s not surprising that over 50% of US households own some sort of Apple product. Why has Apple been so successful? Apple has benefited from network effects. The first type of network effect that Apple has benefited from […]
Information Cascades and the Housing Bubble
In the late 2000s, the United States experienced its worst economic recession since the Great Depression. One of the primary causes of this recession was the collapse of the housing market that took place around 2007. In the few years prior to its collapse, the housing market was thriving. Prices were rapidly increasing in the […]
DuckDuckGo: A Different Kind of Search
The recent trend in search engines has been to “personalize” searches for various reasons. For example, Google will change the search results based on past search history. Google has also been criticized for all the tracking they do, and in light of that, maybe it’s not so surprising that someone has made a new search […]
Netflix and the Potential End of the Long Tail Practices
In the article below, the author discusses how a new business plan for Netflix may have ruined their long tail business scheme that had made them so successful. The new decision by Netflix was to make customers buy online access and physical DVD rentals separately with no discount for buying into both. Intially, once the […]
Localized Conformities like Fashion Trends are Direct Results of Information Cascades
Source “A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades” – Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch http://snap.stanford.edu/class/cs224w-readings/bikhchandani92fads.pdf Los Angeles is the home of Hollywood movie stars, lavish nightlife and cuisine; but most of all, it is the birthplace of funky, modern fashion trends. Due to this little known fact, Sushil […]
Hurricane Sandy Aid
While many anticipated damage from Hurricane Sandy, most did not realize the gravity of Hurricane Sandy until it actually hit. It has affected many students at Cornell because their homes were destroyed and family members were in need of desperate help. The effects of Hurricane Sandy embody many topics we have discussed in class thus […]
Understanding IBM’s Watson
Watson is a computer system developed by IBM that is capable of answering questions posed in natural language. Watson’s claim to fame was that he beat all-time champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings on the quiz show Jeopardy!. His victory was momentous as it demonstrated the unprecedented ability for a computer software to understand the […]
Information Cascades: Fighting for Democracy
Thinking about the Arab Spring or the fall of the Soviet Union, it seems that the entire action grows exponentially out of nowhere – suddenly a massive number of people started protesting across countries. But how did all this start? why then and not before? and why did it happen in such a big scale? The […]