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Bertil
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Would you care to rephrase, answer or comment on my question on the same topic?
http://www.quora.com/Upvoting-on-Quora/Is-the-upvote-bias-towards-more-popular-answerers-a-threat-to-quality-on-Quora
I was working on an answer, but I see you have a lot of insight on the subject.
Are Quora Votes A Viable Metric? Influence, Popularity, Expertise, Campaigns & Currency.
As I mentioned in my brief recent post on Quora, I would be digging into it a bit more. First, if you want to know more about the service, here is one of the best descriptions around. I particularly like this part: "It’s like the community side of LinkedIn, merged with the organic networkin...
Honestly, I have the impression that twits allow interaction with more people, hence more likely people whom I know personally—but they are far less insightful than what you did a few years back with live-bloging. It's a shame, but I expect more interesting bits will come in a few days.
In loving memory of live blogging
In the early 2000s, I partnered with Gary Bolles in something called Conferenza Premium Reports. It was a subscription-based newsletter that we circulated via email. We covered the major tech conferences of the day, like "D," TED, PopTech, Demo, PCForum, Agenda, the Dick Shaffer Outlook Conferen...
Was I misunderstood to assume that long tail was about lines on a log-log scale plot?
Netflix data shows shifting demand down the Long Tail
A team at Wharton did some Long Tail analysis on the Netflix ratings data the company released for its Netflix Prize. Although I don’t agree with many of the conclusions in their paper (like some other academics, they got confused over definitions of “head” and “tail” and fell into the common tr...
Your result is very interesting (I already teach that paper in class) but avoids two essentials elements :
* What reduces global diversity is the existence of a common institution, not "the Internet". In many coutries (USA excluded) National News has been so important that any diversity offered by Web sites appeared as a new and welcome departure from monoculture; more generally, it's the distribution of news sources off- and on-line that you need to compare (and how connected they are).
* Algorithms offer the possibility to decide whether to encourage niche or global success: Amazon makes more money, because more click-through, by suggesting Harry Potter every time, but they don't; it leverages their uniqueness and encourages reader's curiosity. Physical insitutions have the same recommendation for everyone, and cannot offer diversity in any other way then by being many.
I'll put more details on my blog soon: twocroissants.wordpress.com
Online Monoculture and the End of the Niche
Online merchants such as Amazon, iTunes and Netflix may stock more items than your local book, CD, or video store, but they are no friend to "niche culture". Internet sharing mechanisms such as YouTube and Google PageRank, which distil the clicks of millions of people into recommendations, may a...
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