The Odd Couple of Social Networking
In early March, a router giant, Cisco, purchased Utah Street Networks, the owners of a social networking site tribe.net. Cisco did not buy the actual social network community (which is comprised mainly of those involved in the Burning Man, but rather, the underlying technology so that they can focus […]

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/34422.html
 
In Online Social Networks and the Profit Motive, Elizabeth Millard explains entrepreneurs’ wariness in investing in social networks. How exactly does one advertise in an online social network? While financial analysts do see online social networks as promising markets, the question remains how to tactfully and efficiently advertise on such venues. “[Advertising on […]

hypersearching, as discovered in class, is a powerful tool in attaining a fast and accurate result when searching for a query term. Although it is not implemented globally yet, it would prove to be a very powerful searching mechanism. While surfing the web for my own entertainment sakes, I have found several aspects of Korean web […]

BigChampagne Is Watching You

BigChampagne
In class we recently finished discussing the idea of an information cascade. One application for information cascades that came up was trend-setting. The idea is to jump start a trend (fashion, music, etc.) by targeting and attracting key individuals who have a lot of sway in the industry. […]

We have been talking a lot about network effects where the decisions of one’s peers (fellow decision makers) positively influence one’s choices. Since I am a cynical and jaded college student, this prompted me to investigate more subversive network effects where the decisions of others negatively influence one’s decision. The closest effect I could find […]

Flow of information is a potent theme in today’s world. On one hand, it is the gateway to an aware and well-informed society while on the other; it can lead to socially non-optimal situations and in the extreme case, have dangerous repercussions. One example of such a negative impact is the spread of suicide epidemics. […]

Google gets into the political arena.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-googltics25mar25,1,1251038.story?coll=la-headlines-business
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2004/05/63557
 
We saw in class that Google sells certain keywords to merchants such as Ithaca Calendar Clocks and shopping website like eBay and Amazon. However, sellers and traders are not the only ones buying Google “AdWords”, politicians are seeing the vast reach of internet advertising and jumping in. Back in 2004, […]

“Hershey’s major shareholder pledges to keep power”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070401/bs_nm/hershey_cadbury_wsj_dc
The article I read was discussing the current situation of share ownership within the Hershey’s corporation. There had been speculation of a merger with a Cadbury in Britain, but recent information released by the majority shareholders makes that seem unlikely to happen. Hershey’s Trust who is the […]

A fairly old article by Andrea Devenow and Ivo Welch written in 1996 still continues to accurately describe the financial world more than 10 years later.
Rational Herding in Financial Economics
The authors describe the success of the Herding and the Efficient Markets Hyporthesis (EMH) by discussing the stock market and the behavior of many investors. […]

Recently we’ve talked about the “wisdom of the crowds” in information cascades. In particular, how two consumers’ decision to choose to go to restaurant A instead of B may cause all subsequent consumers to make the same choice. This scenario embodies this notion that herds of people might make a better choice than a single […]