Social Networks Monopoly
Source Article: http://www.barrons.com/articles/rich-get-richer-as-google-and-facebook-dominate-web-ads-1443851396
This article discusses the continued dominance of two major social networks– Google and Facebook as they are the perfect exhibition of the “Rich gets richer” rule and the cascading behavior in networks. It claims that Google and Facebook will continue to lead this internet competition and it has become a golden age for them. It exhibits some statistical data about the percentage of advertisement for those major social media networks and it is clear that Google and Facebook are winning the game without a doubt.
However, the situation was not like this few years ago, when major social media networks are basically head to head competing. As Google and Facebook gradually starting to have slight advantages in the competition of social media websites, it becomes easier for them to win over their competitors like Twitter, Yelp and other social medias. This follows the “Rich Gets Richer” rule, as once Google and Facebook managed to have more resources, it becomes easier and easier for them to keep their position in the race, which may gradually lead to a social networks monopoly.
Additionally, Facebook’s development also exhibits the network cascading model. Starting in Harvard University, Facebook was managed to spread within a cluster of Harvard students. However, since there were strong ties from Harvard to other colleges, Facebook quickly became very popular. Since the majority of the population are using Facebook as one of their prime social media, it is very easy to continue the cascade modeling and have this Facebook technology to spread within the population. Thus this can also be a reason why Facebook is continuing dominating the social media websites over Twitter and Myspace.