Oprah and the Rich-get-richer effect
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2015/10/19/oprah-effect-does-everything-she-touches-turn-gold/74211636/
The article discusses how the “Oprah effect” began and still exists, even though she has retired from her show. The origin was Oprah’s book club, in which she endorsed books she liked, but these choices then rocketed to the tops of the charts in sales and popularity. These books must have been at least semi popular for her to be exposed to them, but once she announced her preference for them in her book club segment, the rest of America seemed to agree with her. With someone as famous as Oprah, she can have immense influence over the rest of the country. When Oprah lists something as one of her favorite items, she is increasing its popularity much more over other items, however the “rich-get-richer” phenomenon is only substantiated if the item continues to get “richer.” This was in fact true, as the rest of the country following Oprah then followed her in buying the specific book, watching the movie, or buying the product she endorsed, increasing the popularity each time and making that item “richer.”
The rich-get-richer effect we discussed in class involves a certain item with somewhat more popularity continuing to get more popular compared to the other options. This could start with simply one person choosing item A over item B, but then the next person may see the effect of item A being slightly more popular in that the person before them chose this item for some reason. This also relates to information cascades in which maybe item B was better, but the second person assumes the first person knew something that makes item A the better choice and may follow them, which could lead to a whole cascade of people making decisions based on what other people chose. This could be true in the sense of Oprah’s choices as well; there may be far better books out there, but people won’t even try them because they saw Oprah pick a certain book, so they assume it is good and will buy it as well. Oprah does have some validity however, as most likely at the beginning she did have very good choices that she shared with people and now has respect for these. However at this point, she could choose most anything and people would listen to her. The item that first gets chosen by someone then has a slight edge in popularity, so then it is slightly more likely to get chosen again over another item, and then will have a greater disparity in popularity from the other item, and this can continue, which is why it is said the “rich get richer.” We talked about this in terms of certain links being more popular than others, but this certainly works in popularity of buying items and public advertising as well.