Are Betting Markets Dead?
In class we talked about the wealth of knowledge prediction markets can provide and their impressive historical accuracy. Prediction markets are so powerful because they combine the knowledge, and feelings of many different individuals with accuracy that polls can’t obtain. This is because of the nature of prediction markets: Since money must be placed on […]
Snapchat’s Viral Marketing Campaign
Recently, Snap Inc. launched a new hardware, Spectacles, which are sunglasses that can record videos up to 10 seconds at a time from the wear’s perspective, and upload to Snapchat memories. The intuition behind these sunglasses is that users do not have to pull out their phones to take a snap, thus can free their […]
Cascading Behavior Among Chimpanzees
The existence of social learning among chimpanzees regarding using unique tools to help find food or to groom has been well documented. While these behaviors have an ecological basis in their origin, a 2014 study in Animal Cognition recorded a group of chimpanzees adapting a trend of putting a blade of grass in their ear. Researchers […]
Prediction Markets and the Donald
For the 2012 Presidential election the Intrade prediction market correctly forecasted outcome of almost every state (Flordia was expected to vote Romney) [link]. However just before the election started, a Trump victory was priced at $0.22 on Predictit.com and $0.258 on the Iowa Electronic Markets. While the fact that an event with a proablity of ~1/4, actually occurred […]
Why Do Social Media Apps Lose Popularity?
We all remember Social Media sites that are not popular or may not even exist anymore — Ping, Google+, MySpace… why did these once popular apps lose their user base? The answer lies in the fact that there is not a substantial enough direct benefit for people to transition from using the most popular social networking sites […]
Echo Chambers and Network Clusters
Many people were surprised by the results of the election, and post election analysis tells us that social media has a lot to do with it. Because people are allowed to curate their friends online, it’s very easy to become part of a bubble, or an echo chamber, where ideas that you agree with are […]
Why Android is Winning the African market
Why Android is Winning the African market November 14, 2016 In the USA and many first world countries, iPhones seem to be the people’s favorite. It is not very surprising that they are in high demand even though very expensive. On the other hand, in Africa, Android phones seems to own the vast majority of […]
Power Law for Start-Ups in India
Many entrepreneurs have struggled to convince venture capital firms to invest in their start-ups. Perhaps its due to the idea simply not being good enough, but sometimes a rejection can also be due to the power law in which an investment has to be evaluated in terms of its potential to return to the fund […]
Online shopping: How product reviews cause information cascades
Many people prefer to shop online instead of visiting stores. “The influence of information cascades on online purchase behavior of search and experience products” describes how information cascades affect individuals’ online purchases. The article discusses the large amount of information that is offered to online shoppers regarding “other users’ choices and product popularity.” This wealth […]
The Subprime Lending Bailout in Retrospect
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16734629 This semester, I have taken a couple courses that seem to be entirely independent of this Networks course yet week after week I find myself applying information science concepts to the material learned in these other courses. One example is a course I am taking on urban neighborhoods and housing policy. Naturally, a large […]
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