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Social Exchange and Social Media

The social exchange theory describes the social dynamics within a group and how they can be modeled by the power imbalances of the interactions within the group’s social network. The person with the most power in the relationship gets the majority of the value. The purpose of this theory, according to this article, is to […]

Uber and Lyft’s “Batch-Matching” Markets

https://mashable.com/article/uber-batch-matching-ride-hailing-request/ In class, we extensively discussed the concept of matching markets–situations where people are matched with goods that they have preferences for. Uber and Lyft are really good examples of the matching markets model. Each rider needs to be matched to one driver, and they all want the shortest possible wait time. The Mashable article […]

Average Bid Auction vs. Low Bid Auction

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/397e/d140ce9d6248d13b8843eae1af9e6a3d445f.pdf Besides the first price and second price auctions, many places around the world, like Italy and Taiwan, adopted a different type of auction — average bid auction. In this method, “the contractor whose price is closest to the average of all bids submitted” is awarded. To be more specific, the winner has the bid […]

How to Not Regret Paying $3.1M for a Fish

Paying $3.1 million dollars, or 125 times the market price of a fish, might sound quite ridiculous, but according to Kiyoshi Kimura – the president of Japanese sushi chain Kiyomura Co. – it’s a strategic move for his company. At the beginning of this year, Kimura was the top bidder in the first auction of […]

Google’s first price auction roll out

https://digiday.com/uk/publishers-enjoy-short-term-cpm-spikes-up-to-50-in-first-few-days-of-googles-first-price-auction-rollout/ Google Ad is shifting to a first price auction to keep auctions standardized across the Ad tech market. With this change, ad buyers will need to adjust their current strategies at the second price auction. Unlike the second price auction where bidders just need to bid at their true value and pay the second […]

Facebook Amps Up Its Limits

The Search Engine Journal article from April delves into Facebook’s new process of making sure they are putting the best information forward, by limiting the spread of particular groups and pages. The article discusses that it will be using a new algorithm of Click-Gap signal in order to detect the authority of these pages and […]

Braess’s Paradox in Basketball

Source: The price of anarchy in basketball, Brian Skinner, https://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1801.pdf I really enjoyed learning about Network Traffic and, in particular, found Braess’s Paradox incredibly interesting. I looked into it a bit more and found that it not only applied to vehicular traffic, but it also applies to electric grids, food webs, and sports. Specifically, Braess’s […]

Google’s New Algorithm

Google Says a Change in Its Algorithm Will Highlight ‘Original Reporting’ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/business/media/google-algorithm-original-reporting.html?searchResultPosition=10   Google has decided that they will be changing their ranking algorithm for web searches. Now, the publication that started a buzz of articles will be the first listed result which would make original reports to be more widely seen. This is especially […]

Institutional Racism and Power Dynamics in Community Service

Privilege, Power, and Public Health Programs: A Student Perspective on Deconstructing Institutional Racism in Community Service Learning (Taboada 2011) Many public health programs and schools use a community service-learning framework for teaching social emotional learning while promoting cultural awareness. This study focuses on institutional racism in the context of community service — a barrier that creates […]

Science: Fixing the internet

Article: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6417/871 This article, published in Science by Jonathan Zittrain, outlines how the web has changed from its initial concept to its current structure. He first outlines the overarching initial design. First, the “procrastination principle”: essentially “set it and forget it”, meaning components of the web were made freely available, and the designers stepped back […]

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