Netflix’s Games: Marketing with Tipping Points
This week, Netflix has announced their plan to launch a new lineup of mobile games for all Android devices, the company’s first step in attempting to enter the mobile gaming market. The games include two “Stranger Things”-themed games entitled “Stranger Things: 1984” and “Stranger Things 3: The Game,” as well as three independent games entitled […]
YouTube’s Recommendation Algorithm
At YouTube’s “beta” launch in May 2005, the platform started off around 30,000 site visitors per day. Only half a year later with its official launch in December 2005, YouTube was reeling in two million video views a day. Only a month after that in January 2006, the daily views jumped up to 25 million […]
Facebook and Information Cascades
https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/03/24/173582/the-curious-nature-of-sharing-cascades-on-facebook/ Even though Facebook’s popularity has reduced over the years, it is still one of the most used and famous social media sites in the world. Facebook was the main player to change the social media. The features it provided since the beginning were revolutionary and transformed the way people interacted with each other. Posting […]
Ecology and Signaling
In this post, we will be discussing ecological signaling theory and how it relates to what we’ve learned about signaling. A fairly notable example of signaling in biology, is the phenomenon of “aposematic coloration,” or warning coloration. It occurs when an organism evolves a specific pattern of coloration as a warning signal to predators […]
Alternative Explanations for Power Laws in Advanced Technology
We have discussed how a simple preferential attachment mechanism produces rich-get-richer dynamics that are accurately modeled over time as a power law distribution. But the distribution appears in many contexts, some of which cannot be explained by this mechanism. For example, the paper I will be discussing finds that the computational power of the largest […]
Youtube and Information Cascade
Recall this: you’ve just arrived home after a long day of studying in Duffield Hall. You throw your bag on the floor and plop onto your bed. The Networks assignment due tomorrow at 11 AM lingers in your mind, yet, instead of opening gradescope, your fingers somehow has opened Youtube to watch your favorite creators. […]
COVID-19 and Bayes’ Theorem
Within the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic spread globally in an exponential manner. The overwhelming cases prompted action to be taken place in order to help people be aware of their potential of getting infected or already having the virus. Showing symptoms of the virus can be highly indicative of being infected but there […]
PageRank Beyond the Web
PageRank is an algorithm developed by Google incorporating a system of scores that use the link structure of the web to determine which pages are important given a user query. However, as this article emphasizes, PageRank is now used in applications far beyond its origins in Google’s web search. Its applications range from ordering genes […]
Theorizing the Instagram Explore Algorithm
Our discussion of ranking algorithms such as PageRank and hubs and authorities can be applied to a variety of topics, including social media algorithms such as Instagram. Although these algorithms are often proprietary so that users cannot easily exploit them, we can begin to theorize what a simple version of their ranking algorithm might look […]
Using Stereotypes to Identify Online Transactions
It is not that uncommon to feel uneasy whenever one is shopping in sketchy, questionable sites for a particular product. In particular, there is always a sense of uncertainty in sites that typically are not as well-known as others. The topic of auctions and transactions becomes relevant in addressing this issue as it gives us […]
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