Explaining the Instagram Algorithm
How the Instagram Algorithm Works in 2018: Everything You Need to Know How Instagram’s algorithm works Many of us remember in early spring 2016 when Instagram decided to change their algorithm from reverse chronologically displaying posts. Instagram’s justification for the shift was grounded in the claim that users were missing a majority of […]
Are Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer?
There’s no denying that the popularity of content on large social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. impacts the likelihood of that content getting seen and read. If someone or something goes viral, it will almost immediate gain some form of traction. This article gives concrete data based on user studies. In one study, […]
Shift from Second Price Auction to First Price in online advertising
https://clearcode.cc/blog/first-price-second-price-auction/ With the increasing popularity of technology, online advertising systems are used more. Recently, there has been a shift from second-price to first-price auctions. This is due to the lack of transparency that a second price auction has. It is commonly caused by the inconsistencies between different platforms or the raise of price floors without […]
Competition between Search Engines
Looking at different types of crawler based search engines, it is interesting to note how many people have a preference for a specific search engine. Why is it that some people prefer Google to Bing or Yahoo, or vice versa? This boils down to the basics of how a crawler based search engine operates. Crawler […]
How Youtube Changed Its Algorithm
Nowadays, going on Youtube is a way to let the time pass, and procrastinate. However, it wasn’t always like that that. As Casey Newton from The Verge wrote on his article, “How Youtube Perfected the Feed”, Youtube started off as a platform to ‘embed videos onto other websites’. If we were to put this into […]
Issues of Transparency in Advertising Auctions
We learned in lecture about advertiser use of second-price auctions in order to determine amounts paid and who gets to advertise, but as shared in this article, developments have occurred in this sphere which have opened up possibilities of using first-price auctions for these purposes instead. Due to practices such as “header bidding”, simultaneous bidding […]
Facebook’s Bidding Process for Political Advertisers
URL: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/06/facebook-launches-controls-regulate-ads-publishers Supplement info: https://adespresso.com/blog/everything-need-know-facebook-ads-bidding/ In the past few years, there has been a growing problem with Facebook, fake news, and advertisements. Malicious advertisers have taken advantage of Facebook’s easy bidding process for ads in an attempt to sway national events such as elections. In the 2016 election, Russians used fake accounts and pages to […]
Twitter pulls down bot network that pushed pro-Saudi talking points about disappeared journalist
Twitter recently took down hundreds of bots that were using the platform to influence public opinion of the recent disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. After the recent coverage of said journalist, there has been a spike in pro-Saudi Arabia tweets on Twitter, most of them traced to spam accounts. Influence operations are often undertaken using […]
Braess’s Paradox
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/10/20/bad-traffic-blame-braess-paradox/#203f9bcb14b5 This article discusses Braess’s Paradox and real world examples of when newly built roadways, designed to reduce traffic, actually worsened the traffic. The paradox explains that building new roads can increase traffic while eliminating existing roads can improve commutes by limiting congestion. The reason why this happens is because upon the opening […]
Comcast Purchase of Sky
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-23/comcast-makes-risky-bet-on-global-scale-in-response-to-netflix In recent months, there has been an auction between Fox and Comcast to purchase Sky, which has over 20 million customers mainly in the UK. Following initially close bidding, Comcast cast a bid of nearly 40 billion to win, and ultimately purchase Sky. This auction is interesting in the sense that although Comcast sees […]
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