http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3fc8f6dc-1ff0-11db-9913-0000779e2340.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/21/digesting-googles-new-ppa-advertising-product/

The past several weeks we have discussed the internet and the implications of link analysis

and the ranking of sites. In today’s extremely volatile stock market, the search engine giant

Google stands at as one of the lone bright spots in an incredibly shaky economy. As discussed

in Chapter 10 of our text, internet advertising […]

A couple of years ago, I remember reading a blog that reported that BMW’s german site had been banned and its PageRank reset to 0.  Google was punishing the company for exploiting its search algorithm. It was found that BMW was using a “doorway page” for many of its sites to artifically increase its ranking. A doorway page is usually a single […]

http://opus.zbw-kiel.de/volltexte/2003/974/pdf/dp445.pdf
After searching for a long time for an interesting article relating to information cascades I found this. This article discusses the underlying reasoning behind mass emigration from one area to another. It takes an approach similar to the one we took in class going through the basic reasoning […]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2005-06-22-viral-usat_x.htm
This article talks about a popular way of advertising called viral marketing. This technique has become increasingly more popular in recent years. Viral marketing is a way of advertising that uses already existing social networks to increase brand awareness. It is spread in a viral process, similar to pathological and computer viruses, usually by some […]

In the March 4th, 2008 issue of the Cornell Daily Sun, columnist Ben Birnbaum wrote an article entitled The Audacity of Hype. In the article, he discusses the trend, especially of the younger generation, of supporters of Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination to lack any substantial reason to support his nomination. The author […]

In the March 4th, 2008 issue of the Cornell Daily Sun, columnist Ben Birnbaum wrote an article entitled The Audacity of Hype. In the article, he discusses the trend, especially of the younger generation, of supporters of Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination to lack any substantial reason to support his nomination. The author […]

Over Spring Break, you may have noticed that Pizza prices have become higher in some pizza parlor around the country. Are these arbitrary events, or are they the results of interaction of a complex economic network?
Given what we have learned in ECON 204, it is not surprising that the rise of pizza prices are not […]

Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus
By John Tierny
New York Times Article: October 9, 2007
In class we have been discussing this notion of information cascades and how easily we can be influence by the choice of others. One interesting figure that was mentioned in the article points to research done by a […]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/12201.html
The preceeding link is an interesting look at information cascading gone wrong. The presented example is about Magic: The Gathering (a popular trading-card game). MTG is popular enough to receive scrutinous examination from a set of hard-core fans. Some of these fans are renowned enough to encourage followers – i.e. many players will play the […]

http://www.shmula.com/197/digg-as-a-game
In this article, the author analyzes why and how users artificially inflate their digg scores on articles. Digg, for those not familiar with it, is a site that people join and post articles, pictures or videos that they found interesting and the other members of the digg community vote on whether or not the article […]