How Memes Spread Through Networks
Memes are an incredibly popular internet phenomenon, to the point that they are becoming increasingly common in offline life as well. They can be seen being used (and misused) in advertisements, Public Service Announcements and political movements, as well as by celebrities or politicians who wish to make themselves appealing the the young adult demographic among […]
Bayes Rule in Terror Security
On the tragic Friday the 13th of November 2015, terror attacks in 6 different locations in Paris killed more than 120 people in the city. The attackers involved in the shooting and bombings were the ISIS extremists who are believed to move into Europe as refugees from Syria. After the incident, European governments have strived […]
Microsoft Continues to Fail at Encouraging Windows Phone Adoption
The current situation surrounding Windows Phone and the popular social and media perceptions of it are highly relevant to many of the recent topics in our networks class. To summarize the articles, ExtremeTech argues that much of Windows Phones’ failure has been due to lack of app content, which is only getting worse with the […]
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 […]
The Future of Snapchat
Several students have written blog posts on the rise of Snapchat. One student compares the growth of Snapchat to that of Facebook, claiming, “Snapchat has now become a phenomenon among all age groups” (Tracing Snapchat’s Rapid Growth). Another student writes, “Snapchat has…taken the social medial scene by storm” (The Snapchat Effect). While these claims are […]
The Enduring Popularity of BlackBerry and Network Effects
In 2009, BlackBerry owned 20% of the global smartphone market. Since then its market share has plummeted to less than 1%, and in countries like the United States the device is extremely rare. However that is not the whole story. The most popular smartphone in South Africa is the Blackberry Curve 8520. In Nigeria BlackBerry […]
Sports Popularity as a Network Phenomenon
In the United States, sports like basketball and football have long been a part of the culture, dominating airwaves and water cooler chatter. These American sports have begun spreading worldwide, eyeing expansions in several profitable global markets. The NFL has moved games to London and the NBA has begun moving games to China. The popularity […]
Pricing with Network Effects
The article from Entrepreneur talks about some general rules about how to price a new product, where I found many connections between it and the Network Effects chapter in our textbook. The author, Mark Stiving points about two important decisions that consumers usually have to make before they finally pay the money and buy some […]
Yelp’s Effect on Restaurants
Network effects affect individual decision-making because network effects provide the individual with some information or idea about whether something is good or not. Individuals choose one thing over another in order to maximize their payoff. This article looks into the effect that Yelp has on the restaurant industry. According to this article, 70% of all […]
Individualism, Collectivism, and Social Epidemics
Psychologists have long puzzled over why social epidemics spread so much more quickly in some countries than others. For instance, in the past 50 years, smoking patterns in industrialized countries have shown a general trend in which the number of smokers first increase before decreasing. However, in the United States, U.K., Australia, and many others, the […]
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