Is Facebook Like a City?

To be honest, I have not figured out exactly how the leading enterprises in the social media industry will be able to convert the large user-base into a revenue model. I am certain that the answer is out there but unlike a majority of people who are enthusiastic about the rise of these new industries, I do not mind being educated on how that will happen. I would be ready to bet that it will be very hard and that at best, only a handful will succeed in finding and executing that revenue plan.

To me, the most obvious value in social media today is that they represent a platform for rich and real time data that is subject to interesting analysis. That idea resurfaced as I was going through this original take on Facebook by Wabi-Sabi and Ikeda at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). I am sure that these two are not the first to compare that formidable network to a real-life phenomena but I find their comparison to the growth of cities really interesting. Going on a  limb, one could say that the linkages between people on Facebook would be parallel to how cities grew and that those links are in turn measures of prosperity in the way that cities represent dense networks for economic activity. 

Social Media As a Market

I do not read many market reports partly because I find the few that i have read monotonous and not illuminating in many respects in addition to the fact that I do not have access to many. However, i have recently tried to understand whether the phenomenon of social media can be understood using the conventional tools of price theory. To start with, it is clear to me that there is a huge market for a number of the most popular and that they exhibit characteristics of power law in respect to popularity. For that reason,I found the TED talk by Johanna Blakley truly novel.

To start with, she states that many media corporations tend to describe markets entirely through social a demographic lens. It must be that this is informed by the legacy of the industry. However, I agree with Johanna to the extent that social media may render this conventional approach less useful and has already overturned the dominant feature of male-driven media. So while I am less sure about her predictions and conclusions, I think that social media is being over hyped but holds potential for media corporations in ways that are seen and that are not easily understood yet. To say the obvious, social media is not a free pass to profitability.

Wikipedia: User Beware

There's a rising realization that disparate networks throughout the web are capable of devising and generating knowledge for a variety of matters. One of the more cited illustrations of the power of these networks is the relative success of Wikipedia. In truth, while I have also made use of select references from Wikipedia and especially regarding definitions for technical terms, I have had reservations of the veracity and accuracy of some fact based information on the site.

It looks that the Achilles Heel of Wikipedia was best illustrated by most recently by a student who inserted a sleeper fact that was later quoted without verification by journalists. Writing in the Irish Times here, Shane Fitzgerald explains the motivation for that experiment. As he explains it, it shows that this concern about both the possibility of manipulation and misinformation are more likely than is recognized.

What most surprises me is that some very well regarded authors of books have used Wikipedia as references for assertions in their books. I am sure that editors should consider that again in spite of the fact that even peer reviewed papers are found to contain errors. To my mind, all this states is that when a source begins to be used without critique, then its limitations are bound to be overlooked.