A number of posts this past week discussed various positive and negative aspects of information cascades. On one hand, companies can use social networks to generate additional social valueforf their products (e.g., FireFox, Nintendo, MySpace). If successful, such strategies can also serve as an efficient advertisement tool.
As mentioned in class, efforts in computer […]

A number of recent posts have discussed examples of technological compatibility in terms of network effects. beata385 and njr25 each discuss HD DVD and Blu-Ray, while brucelee26 considers the transition from Windows XP to Vista — an interesting example, since instead of two competing firms, we have a single company trying to shift its users […]

Most bloggers of this week also continued writing about information cascade, and it is quite amazing that so many examples can be found in our ordinary lives if we observe them carefully. I would like to mention some postings which described easy to understand real world phenomenon.
Blogger kiisska gave an excellent insight about Stephen J. […]

This week’s posters found many examples of network externalities and their effects on the spread of technology.  Blogger w8143 brings up the examples of iPods.  Their large market share makes it more likely that a consumer looking for an mp3 player will know of and trust the brand.  The considerable user base also makes third-party iPod-compatible products more appealing to producers, another network effect which […]

Excellent examples of the information cascade phenomenon seem to be popping up frequently in recent blog posts. The more one learns about this powerful concept, the more one begins to see its effect on a diversity of societal trends. As we’ll see, the results of these effects are not always positive.
Blogger timewalker points […]

In a recent post enciphered discussed political Google bombing. As introduced in class, Google bombing refers to the practice of linking multiple sites and blogs to a certain page in order to boost its ranking in the Google search results. Some of the most famous Google bombs are expressions of political opinion.
One instance of Google […]