Archive for the 'Education' Category

Information Cascades on Digg.com

http://www.shmula.com/197/digg-as-a-game
This article discusses how Digg is similar to something called the “Urn Game”. This “game” quite simply shows the ideas of information cascades. In short, there are two identical urns, W (filled with mostly x-colored balls and some y-colored balls) and Z (filled with mostly y-colored balls and some x-colored). Everyone takes […]

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Google’s New TV Advertising System

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=115896
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article1604806.ece
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070404_033516.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page
In class we talked about Google’s methods of selling their ads. Google sells ads based on the keywords users use to find content they’re interested in using their search engine. Using this method, Google is able to provide the most pertinent ads to the correct group of audience, hence facilitating a larger percent in click […]

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Network Externalities in Microsoft Antitrust Suit

Is Microsoft a Monopolist?
This article concerning the late ’90’s Antitrust suit filed against Microsoft is essentially a summary of the various arguments that were made.  A portion of the article discusses the issue that some of Microsoft’s early adoption practices were percieved as monopolistic, especially pertaining to the inclusion of the Internet explorer web browser […]

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Facebook Rode Network Effects to the Top

Why are a handful of social networking sites so successful while most attract far fewer users? Right now, MySpace and Facebook are strongly in control of the online social networking market, while all other networking sites attract less total traffic combined. According to Hitwise, MySpace has about 81% of the social network traffic […]

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Digg.com as a game and manipulations of information cascades

Digg.com
“Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control.
News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front […]

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Ad Exchange

NY Times Article
DoubleClick plans to announce they will set up a NASDAQ-like exchange for the buying and selling of digital ads.  Currently this company serves both buyers and sellers of digital ads, monitoring things such as number of clicks on a particular ad and working out marketing strategies.  This new type of exchange for buyers […]

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Evolution of Web Advertising

Web advertising today is a vast network of pop-up ads, ads that play music and sound tracks, ads that swim across the screen, and infinitely other in your face advertising techniques used by advertisers. This article studies the different forms of Web advertising in use today, as well as the economics that are driving […]

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Search Engine Optimization a Burden?

SEO Tips
With the growing popularity of online search engines, especially Google, more and more web developers have grown to realize the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  More and more people become aware of what kind of procedures search engines rank pages, and this motivates these people to optimize their web page in terms of […]

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Procter & Gamble Launches Ads to Calm Consumers Over Contaminated Pet Food

While this article doesn’t directly discuss information cascades, Procter & Gamble became the first to launch an advertising campaign aiming to calm consumers over recent contaminations in pet food blamed for the deaths of thousands of pets across the United States. They purchased full-page advertisements in 59 daily newspapers.
This situation, when examined on a […]

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Alternative Energy Business

http://www.swampfox.ws/south-carolina-lured-away-the-director-of-the-university-of-connecticuts-global-fuel-cell-center/
 This article looks into the potential use of alternative energy and hydrogen fuel cells.  The future success of alternative energy seems to rely heavily on its publicity, public appeal, and opinion.  The article explains that the state of Connecticut is the one state that has been really trying to spur the development, manufature, and use […]

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