New Book Scout app

I decided to write about an article I found that talks about Random House introducing a new book app. Random House, the largest book publisher in the world will be releasing a new app called Book Scout that will help facebook users find out about their friends’ book preferences and will give them book recommendations without having to go on their facebook profiles or browse the web. This information is going to be provided by facebook. This app will provide facebook users with a list of books they might like and also with the links where they can buy these books from.

I thought this article was very interesting. It is really amazing what social network can do for us.  I think this new app will come in handy to all those people who are book lovers and who are looking for a good book to read. Instead of having to browse the web which might require more time to do, this new app can provide a list of books within seconds based on the kinds of books one might have liked on facebook or just give them a list of bestsellers they might like or book preferences from friends. Personally I was very happy to read about this new app because I come across this issue whenever I am looking for a good book to read and it really takes time to browse the web in search of answers when you can have an app do all the work for you.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/an-app-to-sift-through-books/?ref=socialnetworking

Tighter Privacy Laws Open Doors for Private Social Networks

In todays digital world there are literally thousands of social networks one can join simply by signing up online. Facebook for example has exceeded 1 billions users recently and that number will continue to grow with the worlds population. In turn, the popularity of social networks will inevitably grow with it. But there is one issue that not many of the users in these networks do not even think about, privacy. Anything post or picture that is uploaded onto the internet is there forever and there is no way to ever retrieve it. This can be especially troublesome for doctors, lawyers, financial advisors or any profession that involves client confidentiality. Doctors and lawyers alike are being fined and held accountable for violating certain privacy laws via their Twitter accounts or Facebook profiles. So as a response professionals everywhere, doctors especially, are joining a new breed of social networking site, private ones. Yes the idea seems arbitrary, but there are many sites that offer privacy to authenticated professionals. It allows the user to know that everyone they are in contact with is a verified professional and makes sending and receiving correspondence more secure, so they won’t have to worry about private info being available to the public like it is on Facebook. This will decrease the number of violations they may incur and allow these professionals to spend more time focusing on helping their clients and patients, not scouring the Facebook pages for privacy violations.

User reviews and referral networks

As I sat in the dentist’s chair last Friday, I contemplated the events that had led me to this often-feared place. My wisdom teeth were coming in rather painfully, so I had gone to my dentist, who had referred me to an oral surgeon who would remove them. But as I sat in this chair, I questioned the advice of my dentist of the last 10 years. I didn’t know this surgeon. His office was in an unfamiliar part of town. I’d never met these receptionists before, and the other people in the waiting room looked gloomy as they poured over National Geographic magazines from 6 months ago, and tried to ignore the soap opera that was blaring from a tv high in the corner.

There are dozens of oral surgeons available in the area, so why did I choose this one? My insurance would have covered many of the other surgery practices in the area, so cost was not an issue. Neither was location. I was in this particular office purely on the recommendation of my dentist. Which means a great deal, of course. My dentist has networked with this oral surgeon for decades. But in this hyper-connected age, I could have searched Google for oral surgeons and gone by who had the best reviews in the area. However, some things are just too important to trust anonymous user 877 for. 

This doesn’t stop me from using someones smartphone to find a good place to eat when I travel, or reading the eBay user reviews before I purchase something priced just too-good-to-be-true. In general though, I have grown much less trusting of user reviews online, as I hear about fake yelp reviews, and other massive review frauds. 

As we accelerate our networking, and even have user reviews for ourselves (linkedin), we must keep trust in mind. For me, at least, it can be very difficult to trust individuals who I have only met online. Any student who has taken an online only course can attest to being left holding the bag after several people bail out on a group project. Millions of people have had their identity stolen online. Many others buy products online and receive something else entirely. In some way, whether or not it is our own fault, we are all somehow affected. 

Our virtual networks are awesome. It’s what makes blogs like this possible. However, the security one can get from face-to-face interaction can be lacking. And it’s a good thing I didn’t look up oral surgeon reviews. The one who cut me open on Friday has only negative reviews.

Creating More Effective Government by Strengthening Peer Networks

For sometime now I have wondered about how the internet will affect our governmental structures and procedures. In the pre-internet structure, the strength of the links between individual citizens and the policy makers that reallocate public resources is relatively weak. There are simply too many people and too many voices for a single leader to address minuscule requests with traditional communication in a representative democracy. As a result It seems like ordinary folks spend a good deal of time feeling alienated from the decision making process at every level of government.

The internet is beginning to bridge the gap between specific local needs and expedient government. Steven Johnson wrote an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on September 21, 2012 (http://tinyurl.com/9a9lcw8) that discusses examples of how the internet is facilitating the formation of peer groups. The old structure kept people separate because there was less of a way of knowing who else in the community shared common complaints and concerns. Through the new developments, it is much easier to operate as a powerful collective and make unified and clear petitions to all forms of government. In one example, citizens are able to collaborate and directly highlight on a map urban issues like potholes, housing blight or abandoned cars. In another, the internet is used to collectively rank the importance of budget issues by all citizens. One of the most promising aspects of the article is the discussion of governments that are using the new networking tools to actually change their tactics and make government budget decisions reflect public concerns more directly. This is an example of how links between the public and the government can strengthen as a result of a reinforcement of the links within the public group.

What might be some other ways in which ordinary citizens might use the internet to show their concerns directly to other citizens? If anyone is familiar with reddit, I’m sure that their system of anonymous upvotes and downvotes could prove effective in assigning a peer-group generated ranking of important issues.

The Network of Baseball Blogs

In the last 15 years or so, there has been a shift in baseball management to a more sophisticated form of statistical analysis called sabermetrics. It was the focus of the book and movie Moneyball and each year more and more teams are using it to make decisions. Interestingly, a lot of the initial work was done by baseball fans who were not associated with Major League Baseball at all. Perhaps because of the success that amateurs had in promoting sabermetrics, there are a lot of baseball blogs today.

In 2010, two articles on baseballanalysts.com showed the connections between different baseball blogs (Article 1, Article 2). First the author defined a connection as any instance of a blog post being linked to by another blog. The first graph he got was too dense in the center, so he decided to redefine a connection as any time a blog linked to another blog three or more times. The graph that this definition generates is a lot clearer.

At the center of the graph are blogs that are devoted to general MLB news. Most of them are use sabermetric analysis. They are not devoted to one particular team, but might get some of their information or ideas from team-specific blogs, requiring them to link to the blog. Outside of the center are the team blogs that link to blogs associated with the same team. At the very edge are team blogs that are linked to, but don’t often link to other blogs, even other blogs that cover the same team.

I was surprised how isolated team blogs were. The only blogs with significant external links are general news blogs. Before looking at the graphs, I would have expected the blogs of one team, say the Boston Red Sox, to link to their division rivals like the New York Yankees or Tampa Bay Rays.

Textbook Network

I was inspired to write this post by a recent experience which I found to be onerous: purchasing a textbook. I had to purchase three textbooks for five classes, and of the three I purchased only 2 were hard copies, the other being an E-textbook. Given a little effort and research I probably could have found these books for cheaper, but given my natural tendency to leave things for the last minute I only purchased one textbook off of amazon.com, saving myself $10-$15 at the most compared to what I would have paid for at the Temple Bookstore on a near $200 purchase (There were no used versions of this textbook at the University bookstore, all versions were brand new).  The other hard-copy textbook I purchased at the Temple University Bookstore, and given that it was necessary to purchase a Mymathlab (MML) access code alongside the book, it was more convenient to purchase a new copy that contained both the book and MML access code as opposed to purchasing a used textbook and the MML access code separately. Also, there were no used versions of the textbook so even if I wanted to purchase the book and online content separately I couldn’t unless I found a student from last semester’s course who was willing to sell me their used textbook. Taking into account the fact that courses switch their required textbooks from semester to semester quite frequently students are often deterred from paying for a book which may have little resale value at the end of the semester. So, it comes with little surprise that students are searching for new ways to access their course content. Recently, bookstores and sites like chegg.com have been catering to students’ need for cheap access to textbook materials by allowing students to rent their textbooks for the duration of a semester at a reduced cost compared to what they would buy them for. Even more recently publishers have started to provide digital copies of their hard-copy textbooks which if purchased need not be returned or unsubscribed and also provide the opportunity to update content from semester to semester, or even class to class. While  E-textbook’s may or may not have some resale value, renting a textbook does not, and the prospect of reselling a book at a later date for some cash at the end of the semester is often enough to make students purchase textbooks from the bookstore (think of those huge lines at the end of each semester for buyback programs).

Digital textbooks will eventually become the norm but publishers are dreading the switch as on average it would represent a 30% reduction to the price of a textbook that they are selling. Coupled with the fact that E-textbooks cannot be resold to the bookstore, as is often done with hard copies, and then sold again to another student who needs the textbook next semester, it could be confidently stated that the eventual standardization of e-textbooks poses a threat to Bookstores everywhere, not just Temple’s bookstore (think Barnes and Noble). Now, in defense of delaying the total implementation of e-textbooks is the notion that not everyone has access to the technology needed to operate such e-textbooks, and that by making the switch from hard copies to digital copies, those with access to the technology will not gain as much as those who do not have access will lose-out on by not being able to access their materials. Every passing day this argument becomes less merited as the average price of technology continues to decline allowing more students who previously did not own a computer to own one (I would venture to say that every student at Temple has access to a computer).

The fact of the matter is that the network for purchasing textbooks at Temple is one that heavily favors the publishers and the bookstores and not the actual students who purchase them. For example, If a student purchases a a textbook for $150 and then sells it back to the bookstore once the semester is over for $60 the student is essentially renting the textbook for $90 (something he/her could have done for much cheaper). The Textbook is bought back by the bookstore with the intention of selling said textbook to another student at a later date. In the network for textbooks it would be in a student’s best interest to sell his or her used textbook to another student who needs the textbook for next semester, thus increasing the re-sale value relative to the bookstore ( A student could ask for $80 on the $150 purchase as opposed to the $60 offered to them at the bookstore). As long at this $80 represents a price lower than that offered by the bookstore for the same hard-copy textbook, students could theoretically sell their hard-copy textbooks to other students for more than they would receive from the University bookstore through a buy-back program. This benefits not only the student-seller but also the student-buyer as he/she can now purchase a textbook for less than what it is offered for at the bookstore. Sites like Amazon help to facilitate the search for buyers of textbooks but a cost, most notably a set commission on any sale and also the cost of shipping. The network for buying textbooks at Temple University is an irritatingly inefficient reflected by the stubbornly high prices students pay for their textbooks in comparison to what could potentially be offered through digital textbooks or by even buying their textbooks from other students for cheaper. Part of this can be attributed to the relative ease in which links are created between the bookstores on campus and the students who use them; as more students fill the lines to sell-back their textbooks only more will join them. The price of books over the past two decades has increased at twice the rate of inflation. Every semester the burden of buying books becomes heavier and heavier. I would love to purchase my textbooks from other students for less than  what i pay at the bookstore but find it very hard to find students who are trying to sell me their textbooks and much easier to find cash when I sell-back my textbooks to the bookstore.

How do you buy your textbooks?

Do you rent your textbooks?

How do you sell-back your textbooks? do you even at all?

Is there some sort of facebook group or service that helps to connect students who need to sell their books and students who need to buy their books at temple?

Are more and more classes starting to course content online?

Any information on your tendencies regarding how you buy and how you sell your textbooks would be greatly appreciated.

MOS

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13997903

http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2011/07/29/138716564/textbooks-for-the-digital-age

Networks and Languages

Prominent  languages can be thought of as natural monopolies because of their network effects. The high cost for a second language to become widely used incentivizes language learning really in only one direction. This of course is naturally understood because of the high popularity of english learning as a second language globally.

An article published by the Canadian economics association (http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.temple.edu/stable/135911?seq=1) discusses the policy implications that should be drawn from this as a result of the findings derived from a “game-theoretic model” of bilingualism. Since the languages were considered as perfect substitutes, the game easily demonstrated cascading phenomenon since the subsequent players tended solely to choose the majority language.  The economists found 3 different Nash equilibriums to the game, no learning, or the complete learning of one language by the other language speakers. The various equilibria reached depend on the costs of learning. The writers argued for the subsidization of only majority language learning to minority speakers as the most efficient solution.

This of course discounts a lot of non-economic factors of languages as well as some economic ones. In particular, I would be curious as to the effect of wealth behind a language, perhaps as GDP(s) per speakers, has on the incentivizing of learning it. Intuitively I feel there would be a positive connection, but it would be interesting to try and quantify, especially as non-english speaking nations are gaining much more economic sway globally. I imagine there is also a strong proximity effect in place which will probably be the cause of many SE asian individuals taking up Mandarin over English as a second languages as more money flows out of China southward. Lastly there is the question of whether complete learning or one global language is an efficient equilibrium considering the costs that would go into it and potential intrinsic and extrinsic losses from the disappearance of a mode of communication. In an increasingly global and diversified world it will be very interesting to see how we decided to exchange ideas.

Communication Revolution or Evolution?

Technology today runs our lives. From our e-mail to Facebooks, Twitters, LinkdIns and everything in between. It’s hard now to imagine a time before being plugged in was essential. It can be difficult to remember that not too long ago, people sent each other real paper mail and called each other when they needed to talk. As society switches to a more technology based way of living more and more people have questioned the way in which people choose to connect. Contentedness and the desire to interact with others is human nature, and previous to the age of computers and social networking sites, getting “close” to somebody was done via face-to-face interactions, or at the very least, a phone call. But now, with the popularity of social networking sites, such as Facebook, has the way in which we connect changed, or just the medium through which we do so? Furthermore, if social networking online does affect our actual social habits, is this effect adverse?

 

The answer to the above questions, many studies have found, is no. Recently, a group of American college students were asked whether they use social networking sites more for social searching or for social browsing (looking up the doings of somebody online that you already know offline versus trying to search for people online to actually meet offline) and the vast majority of people asked said they used sites such as Facebook for social searching. In addition to this study, another one found that 41% of people surveyed used social sites to “keep in touch” as opposed to meet others. Don’t believe me? Check it out here!

 
This shows that the way in which we socialize has not changed, people are merely utilizing the new resources which are available. Furthermore, people are using the sites to communicate with people they already know, not to meet new people, meaning that people have not lost their innate ability to go out and socialize in person. If we had, how would we meet new people with whom we choose to be friends with on Facebook?

Till next time!

Using Your Networks

Learning how to use your networks is just as important as to learning about networks. Networks span from personal interactions to distribution routes and even to attracting the right type of potential employees to your company. In the article When Traditional Tactics Aren’t Enough, Play Videogames , CEO of WibiData, Christophe Bisciglia, needed to attract new employees to his startup company in a unique fashion. In the Silicon Valley, though, unique employee perks, like free food and free bicycles are offered by even the largest companies in the Valley (think Google, Apple, and Microsoft sort of large.) Bisciglia was looking at his company and its relationship to other companies in the area, and he saw common links between hiring practices, the offering of perks like free food for example. This CEO then looked at his company; he looked at the connections made between his employees beyond just working at the company. Bisciglia saw Portal 2, a first person puzzle game produced by Valve as a common link between his employees and sought out a way to take this link in this network to provide a link to potential employees that also like Portal 2. A mod for the game was made and used as a recruitment tool and posted onto Steam, Valve’s online game hub; so far 30 job applications have been submitted from this puzzle game mod.

This is a very interesting way to use networks to help you understand your relationship to those around you and how to connect two supposedly separate networks to build a new network. Studying networks is a great way to understand how people and companies interact and to use networks to see what can be done differently is a great way to benefit from these studies. Companies, if they want to be seen as different and unique, need to use networks in the same way as Bisciglia has used his networks if they want to attract a certain type of employee. This application of studying networks goes beyond just offering healthcare, but should be used to see what type of people a company’s culture promotes and how this current employee network can be used to attract like-minded people. This benefits a company by bringing in employees that want to work for that company, and these employees have a higher chance on getting along with each other, limiting workplace conflicts, and promoting more creative output through this better communicating. Employees also feel more attached with the company because they want to be around the people they work with, thus helping retain employees, and the list of this use of networks goes on.

I do have to ask the question, what way would a company in finance or banking attract employees using their knowledge of networks? A company in Silicon Valley has traditionally had a different culture than a company on Wall Street, so not every company can use a game mod for Portal 2 to attract new employees.

 

What the Hell is a Graph Search?

About a week ago I saw this article on the New York Times website: “With Graph Search, Facebook Bets on More Sharing.”  My first thought, of course, was “What the hell is a graph search?”

Thankfully the first day of our Networks class cleared that up for me: Graph Search.  Graph Theory.  Networks.  Social Networks.  Facebook.

GOT IT.

This new feature (currently in beta) is Facebook’s attempt to leverage the trove of miscellaneous personal information it has amassed over the last near-decade to create a new “social”, network-based, search engine.  Rather than relying solely on keywords and Boolean operators (arcane relics of the early internet) to generate results, Graph Search will utilize the likes, check-ins, and photographs of the friends in your network to present results that are personalized and, Facebook hopes, more relevant.

The premise of Graph Search is that the information available within your social network amounts to a searchable dataset of personal recommendations, and that you will find these personal recommendations more valuable than the results of a standard keyword search.

The usefulness of Graph Search’s recommendations will be largely determined by how much information users choose to make available through their privacy settings.  Facebook, being Facebook, is acutely aware of network connectedness: they know that the introduction of Graph Search will affect the behavior of their users, causing these users to either share more or less information.  Facebook is clearly counting on more.  Tom Stocky, one of the creators of Graph Search, notes in the NY Times article that Facebook is hoping users will actively share more information in hopes of appearing “useful in the eyes of their friends.”  Facebook is counting on a cascade effect in which one group of friends after another discover the social benefits of opening themselves up (even more) online, leading eventually to a network effect in which the Graph Search will find its usefulness amplified as a function of its popularity.

Interestingly, this is all happening against a backdrop of increasing concern over online privacy.  The NY Times cites several studies that found young users actively reducing the amount of information they are sharing online.  This makes me interested in the possibility, from a game theoretical standpoint, of cheating.

Graph Search could be understood as a public good game.  It is possible for some users to cheat (withhold their information, reducing the usefulness of Graph Search for everyone, while continuing to benefit from the Graph Search feature themselves), while others cooperate (share their information, increasing the usefulness of Graph Search for all users).  Without a system of punishment to discourage cheating (like tying one’s access to Graph Search to one’s privacy settings), Graph Search will not have the increased amount of data it needs to live up to its potential.

For those of you who were in Behavioral Economics with me last semester (I know I saw one or two of you), I thought I’d throw this question your way: considering that the reliance on personal recommendations introduces all manner of biases (the law of small numbers, gambler’s fallacy, and confirmatory bias), do you think Graph Search will provide results that are better or worse than what one might find using Google?

New York Times: “With Graph Search, Facebook Bets on More Sharing”

– Rob Lindgren