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 : 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

Courtsey: farm1.static.flickr.com

I love communicating with people and sharing ideas with them. And most of the conversations are
fulfilling and productive and we both end up learning from each other. However, there are times
when I find some glaring logical fallacies in our language which hinder communication and stunt intellectual growth.I do not mind them when we are talking informally, but in any serious conversation logical fallacies can create major misunderstandings.Those are the ghosts worthy of exorcism. Here are some common logical fallacies which I observed.

(1) “Statistically most of the Indian policemen have mustache. Mohan is an Indian policeman hence he should have a mustache.”
This sort of argument suffers from a basic statistical mistake. Statistics talks about things in bulk. It does not say anything about one particular case. Hence to draw particular conclusions from statistical data is fallacious. Mohan might be an Indian policeman but you cannot infer from that that he must have a mustache.

(2) “I found evidence of no disease.”
There is no such thing like (more…)

Tags: Fallacy, Informal Logic, Loaded question, Luck, Philosophy, Philosophy of Logic, Statistics

Mostly it is the questions which really matter. Einstein said that if we ask the right questions, much of our work is done.

Not a while ago I did an interesting experiment. I wanted to see how much order can emerge from randomness.So I made these two computer programs.And the results suggested some powerful questions. (more…)

Tags: Giant Panda, Humour, Program stream, Randomness

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

How much value you place on the next five years of your life?

I read a piece of news a few days ago about a person  falsely accused of sexual abuse. After spending five years in jail, it was found out  that actually he was innocent and the detective who investigated him was having an  affair with his wife.

The point which jumped out from the news article was that he got $16 millions over  the wrongful conviction. Note that the judge equalized the value of his lost five  years and harassment to $16 millions. The question I ask is  : How much value do  you place in the next five years of your life? Allow me to put an entrepreneurial twist  to the question: How much value do you think you can create in the next five years?  Is it more or less than the value placed on the life of a man who spent five years in  jail doing nothing? Can you at least aim for producing value worth $20 million  dollars in five years? Or $50 millions?

The problem with us is that (more…)

Tags: Gene, Human, Law, Mathematics, Nonlinear system, Physics

“Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love”

~ Einstein.

Last time I talked about Quantum Tunneling, a strange phenomena whereby particles tunnel through barriers where they are not supposed to be according to classical physics.

But according to Quantum Physics, this phenomena happens at precisely the rate the maths of quantum physics predicts.

Quantum tunneling is the secret behind the tunnel diode. So, the next time you listen to a high quality stereo music, remember that none of it would have existed if quantum tunneling did not exist.

Today I will talk about Time Travel. (more…)

Tags: Einstein, General Relativity, Kip Thorne, Quantum mechanics, Relativity, Stephen Hawking, Time Travel

“You are not thinking.You are merely being logical.”

~ Neils Bohr to Einstein when Einstein rejected the Quantum Theory.

Stephen Hawking founded a new branch of physics called quantum cosmology. At first glance it may sound quite paradoxical since quantum physics is the physics of very small sub atomic particles and cosmology is the physics of very large and distant objects like stars and galaxy. And the laws of physics governing the micro world and the macro world are so different that they seem irreconcilable.

It is the idea of quantum cosmology which holds the key to the feasibility of parallel universe. (more…)

Tags: Einstein, Quantum mechanics, Theory of Relativity

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S
relativity

~ Albert Einstein.

From the very beginning Albert Einstein’s life seemed to be an endless series of failures. He wasn’t able to speak before 3.5 years of age. His parents feared that he might be retarded.

When he was in school he was known to ask silly questions. His teachers said that he was so dumb that he was coming in the way of other student’s progress. One teacher directly asked him to spare others and leave the school. Naturally Einstein didn’t like going to school. He dropped out of high school, as a result he could not get a regular job. To secure a job he had to take a special exam. He failed in it. He took it again and then passed. He had to take a low paying, boring job as a patent clerk. There he got lots of time to think.

Like any genius he had a knack of asking very simple questions having earth-shattering results if you try to answer them(and answer them correctly). In his famous quote he said that 90% of the job is done if you ask the right questions. And he asked one simple question which changed the course of history and how we view the universe (more…)

Tags: Albert Einstein, Newton's laws of motion, Special relativity, Speed of light, Theory of Relativity, Time Travel