Courtsey: thesituationist

Social Networks pervade the internet.Facebook CEO, Mark Zukerberg  often talks about social graphs and the new emerging business  model(and what not). Despite the apparent failure of Facebook to  leverage its business potential , there is a ring of truth in the  almost prophetic pronouncement of the CEO of the biggest social  network site.

Just like links have deep mathematical structures (which Google  exploited to the hilt), Social Networks have even deeper and more  meaningful structures ready to be exploited. And it has mathematical  precedence as a study of Network Theory.

Starting with isolated research in the early twentieth century , and  following with significant gaps in research progress, network theory  has recently formed a broad theoretical discipline. And it has just  just come of age. The most appealing aspect is the live and  extensive hot bed to test and exploit its theories in the form of  Social Networks like Facebook,Myspace, Orkut etc.

Network Theory fits within a broader theoretical discipline known as  complexity theory(the study of complex systems). Complexity theory is interdisciplinary and studies complexity on  multiple levels. Example of complex systems include weather  patterns, food webs, traffic flow. Network Theory is a subset of  complexity theory that specifically studies complex networks. These  theories overlap and influence each other and their boundaries are  fuzzy.

In this series I will shine a light on the results in Network theory  and how they can be leveraged to push social network marketing to a  totally new level. Think Yahoo catalogs and then think Google’s  intelligent search engine, I am talking about that kind of level up.

You must have heard of “ small world effect“, and if not that  then you surely must have heard of “ six degrees of separation“. It  is hypothesized that you are separated by anyone else in the tangled  network with average of six: means that there is someone who knows  someone who knows someone who knows you. The average length of this  chain is six.Now this is a very powerful result. And once you see  something powerful, the best thing is to start asking questions–  lots of it: How can I leverage it? Can it explain something that we  have noticed already? How can I manage that change now that I know this?  Can I innovate on it? Does it open a new dimension for marketing? If  yes then how can I get on it and exploit it?

It is very important to ask these kind of questions because the  questions themselves(even if you don’t have an answer right now)  show you that we find marketing space crowded only because we have  not discovered other marketing dimensions. Imagine living in a two dimensional  world and all of a sudden discovering the third dimension, and think  what kind of mobility that knowledge will give you.

These kind of results are fundamentally different from tactics  marketers apply to navigate through the crowd. These kind of results  show you new dimensions, not just how to eke out a living in an  already crowded space. And it is extremely important that you  yourself ask the questions before you see the answers.

And in short, what is that phenomena again? The phenomena is Network  theory which opens up a new dimensions in internet marketing, and  more precisely social network marketing. And when a new dimension  opens up the rules change, even for the dimensions you are already  working on.

It is very important that you think about it. Leave your thoughts, questions etc in the comments and I will try to address most of them plus what I have to say in my next post.

As Discovery Channel would say –”Think again.”

Tags: Complex systems, Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Social network

Courtsey : lostartofblogging.com

We will explore Social Media in the light of Network Theory in the next few posts. And figure out ways how to tap into the mathematics of Network Theory to make the market work for us.Here are some starters for you.

1. We don’t need a Social Media ROI model :Here you will get some very pertinent ROI models for the social media.Essential read !
2. 3 Surprising Mathematical Principles That Every Persuasive Marketer Must Know: It is a blog post based on my presentation to the marketing team of my erstwhile employer, Mindvalley. I talk about 3 little known mathematical principles, tied to psychology, which will tremendously help you in reaching out to the market.
3. How to Understand Your Audience: Data Collection & Analysis: Maki’s blog is one of my favorites . Here he details various useful metrics to consider while< analyzing your blog traffic and gives some tips on how to (more…)

   Tags: Business, Consumer, Marketing, Psychology, Social Media, Social network

Strategy:

A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Strategy is differentiated from tactics, or immediate actions, with resources at hand by its nature of being extensively premeditated, and often practically rehearsed.

In the last post we saw how Bill Gates used a Portfolio of Strategies(henceforth called PoS) to remove some unnecessary uncertainties from the market. Today, we will extend and innovate on the PoS strategy in relation to internet marketing.

There are clear identifiable steps to deploy PoS strategy. And they can be roughly classified in the following manner:

1. Identify a global aim. First you have to identify the common meeting point where you want to go with your PoS.For example, the global aim of Microsoft was to be the leading PC software company. Each strategy in the PoS was achieving this common goal.
2. Contextualize your PoS. Just identifying a goal is not enough. Next comes putting your PoS in a context. Contextualizing mandates setting limitations.Let’s say your global aim is to make money through blogging, then contextualizing the PoS would amount to (more…)

   Tags: Bill Gates, Marketing, Microsoft, Strategy, Uncertainty

Image via CrunchBase

I had some major misunderstandings about Microsoft’s Windows strategy. After some research I realized even more what a genius Bill Gates is. (Even though I might disapprove of some of MS’s policies, but that is besides the point.)

In one sentence Bill Gate’s strategy for Operating Systems can be called Portfolio of Strategies.

It was 1987, and MS-DOS was challenged by more graphical and intuitive Operating Systems. And Microsoft was still a $346 million minnow. The then giants were already eying the OS market in various ways:

1. IBM was building a multitasking OS/2 system.
2. AT&T in collaboration with Sun Microsystem and Xerox was making its own user friendly OS.
3. HP in collaboration Digital Equipment was building its own version of UNIX Operating system.
4. Apple already had a highly graphical OS, and it kept out-innovating Microsoft.

To say that odds were stacked against Microsoft would be an understatement.

Apparently Bill Gates had two options: (more…)

Tags: Apple, Bill Gate, IBM, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Operating system, Sun Microsystem, Windows

Courtsey : http://www.cindoc.csic.es

Imagine millions of neurons made up of simple chemical substances. And when they are meshed together they give rise to an amazing phenomena what we call as human brain.The magic of human brain does not occur because of the individual neurons but because of the way they are connected. Any system has two parts: component and connections. Almost always it is the type of connections which govern the system’s behavior.And those connections give rise to behavior which (more…)

Tags: Applications, Combinatorics, Complex systems, Connectivity, Emergence, Graph theory, Human brain, Math, World Wide Web

SocialRank seemed like a brilliant idea. You get to the far flung niches and aggregate and rank the blogs in each niche.And you get a huge market of eyeballs. And not only our intuition but also a mathematical idea supported this assumption.That mathematical idea is called ‘The Long Tail‘, much popularized by Chris Anderson in his book of the same name.I remember that this book was touted as the prime inspiration for the creation of SocialRank. When I first heard about it I was excited too. I was supposed to architect and program the algorithm which would do the job.And so I did.

As the work progressed, I took a peek into the book, which was the basis of the SocialRank marketing strategy. The more I thought about the idea the more it seemed dubious. And one of the major factors pointing towards the unsoundness of the idea was the mathematical giant named Benoit B.Mandelbrot(He invented Fractal Mathematics and he is called the father of Chaos Theory).He wrote in one of his papers (more…)

Tags: Anita Elberse, Chris Anderson, Education, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School, Long Tail, Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

I attended the recent barcamp in Joho Bahru, Malaysia(6-7th December). Barcamp is an open source , international network of user generated conference(or unconference as many like to call it).The first barcamp focused mainly on web applications and other related open source technologies. Later the concept spilled over to health care, political organization and so on.

It was amazing to find people coming together to unconference about things that they like, things that they think they like and things they don’t like but pretend to like it anyway.

I could sense a combined consciousness emerging from (more…)

Tags: BarCamp, Malaysia, Open source, opensource, Programming, Technology, Theory of Relativity, Unconference, Video game, Web application, World Wide Web

I have been asked, why this potpourri?(For another thread of answer see the about page).
Wouldn’t it be better if I stick to just one topic(say,entrepreneurship or maths)? This potpourri gives an impression that there is no unifying  theme,it is haphazard.

I have to say that this view springs from a false notion. And that is the notion of ’scholasticism’, that we study theory according to fixed demarcated subjects. While in reality, real thinkers don’t think in terms of subjects. What motivates them is questions; deep, penetrating, burning,eternal questions. The question is the  unifying theme, not a category. Why do the stars shine? Why are some  people rich and some poor? Is there a soul? How can I get her to like me?etc.

Any great advance comes not through religiously becoming a scholar of a particular subject, but from following a particular question and going down the rabbit hole.Take for example the advent of computers.Computer technology was actually a result of trying to solve a philosophical riddle concerning the foundations of mathematics (also noted by Gregory Chaitin).

Stage 1-Russel’s Paradox:The story started with Bertrand Russel. He was a well known mathematician turned philosopher turned humanist. He saw some troubling paradoxes in philosophy. One of them is the following: “In a small town there is a barber. And he shaves all those who do not shave themselves(and not anyone else). Does he shave himself?” At once you can see a paradox in this question.If he shaves himself then he is shaving someone who shaves himself. Hence he cannot shave himself. If he is not shaving himself then he is not shaving someone who does not shave himself in the town. Hence, he cannot not shave himself. We reach totally opposite conclusions each time.(Actually his statement is set theoretic, but barber example is a good way to express it in layman terms)

This conundrum may seem trivial, but some of the best minds of those times were grappling with it.

Stage 2-Hilbert’s escape plan: (more…)

Tags: Alan Turing, Bertrand Russel, Kurt Godel, Turing Machine, Von Neumann Architecture

If you are quite worried about the current financial meltdown, then think again. A much bigger danger is lurking round the corner, and the scariest thing is that when it comes, it will come all of a sudden, without a warning.

I began thinking about it when Grigory Perelman proved the “ Poincare Conjecture“. All of a sudden, without warning, without any incremental improvisations.Now, Poincare Conjecture is a 100 years old problem first proposed by Henri Poincare in 1904. It was considered as one of the most difficult open problems of mathematics. Almost all the brilliant mathematicians had tried their hands on it. And one day a scruffy looking Russian, who lived in poverty in a village in Russia just proved it.No warnings, no buzz. Just like that.

This is the nature of mathematics. Even though all the other sciences are done in collaboration and it is hard to do a lot until you keep your ears to the ground and are very familiar with what is going on in the scientific community, maths is a bit different. Although collaboration of some sort is necessary, maths is best done when you are just alone with yourself and having no authority except that of your own mind. And that is dangerous because then the changes are sudden, brought about by a single man whom you might not know at all.

This spells a huge risk for internet security. (more…)

Tags: Analytic, encryption, Grigori Perelman, internet security, Mathematics, Number Theory, Quantum computer, Riemann Hypothesis

This is the video of my talk in the last hacker’s meeting.

Tags: Hidden Markov Models, Internet, Mathematics, Page Rank Algorithm