The Boom of Amazon Advertising and Sponsored Search
As a college student away from home in the midst of a pandemic, what’s the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to get anything you need? Just order it on Amazon! Most people probably think of Amazon as an online superstore for shipping products to your door, but there is a lot more to this e-commerce […]
How the trust and authority factors influence Chinese search engine Baidu’s page and ad rank
In the simple ad placement model VCG introduced in class, advertisers with high value per click will bid on a high price, because of which they can get the best ad slots. However, in the real world, for the Chinese search engine Baidu at least, willing to pay high is not enough for getting a […]
Information cascades and the decline of cooperation in social networks
Sequential decisions within networks, like social media networks, can be modeled in a way that makes them easier to analyze. One important (and interesting) thing that can be found with such an analysis is the occurrence of information cascades. We can think of a chain of sequential decisions (for example, to follow someone or not […]
Why 500 is a magic number on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking site now with more than 722+ million users. Its mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. For an average user, the number of connections they have on LinkedIn often has a direct effect on how well they can use LinkedIn to […]
Network Effects in Blockchains and Decentralized Services
As we learned in class, network effects are the beneficial effects that people both add and gain by behaving similarly to other people. A common example of network effects is joining social media – users add their own value by joining the network because they give other users one more person to access on that […]
Exploring the Role of Game Theory in the Horizontal-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
This blog post builds off my previous one, and examines, through the lens of game theory, how the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) played a pivotal role in incentivizing horizontal nuclear proliferation. Massive increases in nuclear stockpiles around the world in the 1950s was a cause for great concern; between 1952 and […]
Inequality and Network Effects
Primary source consulted: https://news.mit.edu/2020/inequality-across-networks-eaman-jahani-1112 A summary: The source linked above delves into the world of inequality as it pertains to network effects. PhD candidate Eaman Jahani explores the intersection between sociology and computational studies by examining the way social networks can exacerbate inequality. He notes that, because networks play a crucial role in accessing resources […]
Bayes’ Rule and the Strategy for Winning in skribbl.io
Recently, the online game skribbl.io has been used in various social events. The idea of this game is that one of the players is given a word, and the player draws a picture that illustrates the word. The other players then try to guess the word, given the length of the word and the picture. […]
Information Cascades and Sports Gambling
The sports gambling industry, and the gambling industry in general, has been performing extremely well over the last few months. The start continuation of some of America’s most watched sports leagues has resulted in a large uptick in American’s gambling. Other catalysts, such as the pandemic, the election, and legislation changes have all been contributing […]
Disney’s Club Penguin and its Positive Network Effects
Source: https://mashable.com/2011/12/13/club-penguin-disney/ Club Penguin (Disney 2017) was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), involving a virtual world that contained a range of online games and activities. Players would create a penguin avatar and meet with/make friends in various locations throughout the game world. Players of Club Penguin could “waddle around and meet new friends”, as […]
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