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STATUS:CONFIRMED
LAST-MODIFIED:20090219T130114
URL:http://www.northwestern.edu/nico/events/index.html#seminars
PRIORITY:0
CLASS:PUBLIC
UID:377102@northwestern.edu
SUMMARY:Wednesdays@NICO: The Role of Compatibility in Diffusion on Social Networks
DESCRIPTION:Nicole Immorlica - Electrical Engineering & Computer Science\, McCormick School of Engineering. In many settings\, competing technologies -- for example\, operating systems\, instant messenger systems\, or document formats -- can be seen adopting a limited amount of compatibility with one another; in other words\, the difficulty in using multiple technologies is balanced somewhere between the two extremes of impossibility and effortless interoperability. There are a range of reasons why this phenomenon occurs\, many of which -- based on legal\, social\, or business considerations -- seem to defy concise mathematical models. Despite this\, we show that the advantages of limited compatibility can arise in a very simple model of diffusion in social networks\, thus offering a basic explanation for this phenomenon in purely strategic terms. Our approach builds on work on the diffusion of innovations in the economics literature\, which seeks to model how a new technology A might spread through a social network of individuals who are currently users of technology B. We consider several ways of capturing the compatibility of A and B\, focusing primarily on a model in which users can choose to adopt A\, adopt B\, or -- at an extra cost -- adopt both A and B. We characterize how the ability of A to spread depends on both its quality relative to B\, and also this additional cost of adopting both\, and find some surprising non-monotonicity properties in the dependence on these parameters: in some cases\, for one technology to survive the introduction of another\, the cost of adopting both technologies must be balanced within a narrow\, intermediate range. We also extend the framework to the case of multiple technologies\, where we find that a simple model captures the phenomenon of two firms adopting a limited “strategic alliance” to defend against a new\, third technology.*Joint work with J. Kleinberg\, M. Mahdian\, and T. Wexler. NICO Coffee Hour will follow for questions\, networking\, and collaboration. http://www.northwestern.edu/nico/events/index.html#seminars
DTSTART:20090225T120000
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CREATED:20081126T000000
DTSTAMP:20081126T000000
SEQUENCE:0
LOCATION:Evanston
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