-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Michael Orshan wrote: > Some of this is over my head, but I do see something missing that I'd like > to add. What I have been doing, and it is recognized as different, is using > journalism to guide people to a social network where they will find people > of like mind. Now this is my assumption...that people of like mind will > trade together. This can be for money or mind, but trade.
I suppose this depends on what you mean by "trade". If you define it as some sort of transaction like: person A delivers X to person B and person B delivers Y to person A, then I don't think it's true. I.e. if you define "trade" that way, then people of _like_ mind will not necessarily trade. I say that because of the well-defined nature of "trade". If X and Y must be well-defined, then the majority of like-minded people won't show any _more_ instances of trading than we see amongst different-minded people. I think part of the reason for this is that trade (where X and Y are well-defined) comes about mostly because people value X and Y differently. E.g. Bob has plenty of cows but no sheep and Joe has plenty of sheep but no cows; so they trade. If the two people are really of "like-mind", then trading will be at a minimum because the two people are most likely to _already_ have equivalent resources and equivalent values. What's more likely is that Bob and Joe are of _different_ minds. Bob really doesn't value sheep very highly and Joe really doesn't value cows very highly. So, Bob and Joe don't share the same values, which opens the door for trading. There's room for gradation, of course. If Bob and Joe are too different, then they can't trade. E.g. if Bob values sheep at zero and Joe values cows at zero, then they won't trade. And, as above, if they're too similar, then there's nothing to trade. So, as always, there's an interesting region of complexity in between the two boring extremes. > Now just because some content is out there doesn't mean people will flock to > it. That requires advertising and traffic. Is there something in the model > you are discussing that regards moving traffic to a network? If you imagine a sub-group-aware advertising spectrum from totally unaware, where you're exposed to snippets about topics totally unrelated to whatever you're doing at the time, to captive, where you try to sell something to someone you already know _wants_ whatever you're selling. Movie trailers are a good example in between. When you rent an action flick, the trailers on the DVD are usually for other action flicks. But, they can also use other dimensions like other films from the same production company. Ultimately "advertising" in a sub-group aware way is "cross selling", targeting current customers with slightly different or complementary products. And the key lies in maximizing the overlap between the sub-space (of interesting "dimensions") that characterizes a network and the sub-space that characterizes the network you want them to come to. - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it. -- Steven Wright -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGzI6zZeB+vOTnLkoRAtLkAKDDmr9mwDgieVoDEwYY5k3aF7BseQCfQPkI w6QThK6QruUACtUo2cpyeU4= =iMLJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
