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 […]

Several posts during the past week touched on the issue of search and search-based advertising. Search-based advertising is one of the most lucrative markets in the IT industry and the primary source of Google’s revenue. There are two main reasons why Google maintains such a large lead in the market: quality of search […]

A recent post by babaganoush discussed the issue of privacy in keyword-based advertising. As touched on in class, maintaining privacy is one of the chief concerns moving forward as we develop more sophisticated methods of targeted advertising. A recent paper by Chopra and White discusses various implications for privacy as we begin […]