|Talks|

Network effects in broadcast–interpersonal media: Evidence from field experiments on Facebook

Visiting speaker
Past Talk
Dean Eckles
Social scientist, statistician, and assistant professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management
Dec 2, 2016
1:30 pm
Dec 2, 2016
1:30 pm
In-person
4 Thomas More St
London E1W 1YW, UK
The Roux Institute
Room
100 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Network Science Institute
11th floor
177 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Room
58 St Katharine's Way
London E1W 1LP, UK

Talk recording

Communication technologies exhibit network effects since the payoffs for adoption depend on who can be communicated with. Contemporary Internet services such as Facebook and Twitter involve both broadcast communication (i.e. undirected sharing with an individual's network) and non-broadcast communication, such as directed feedback (e.g., comments) on that content. We present randomized experiments that cause individuals to receive more feedback on their broadcasts from all or some of their peers. We find substantial effects of receiving feedback on both giving others feedback and on subsequent broadcasts. This provides evidence about the role of directed behaviors in the adoption and continued use of broadcast functionality. This reduced-form evidence informs expectations about how increases to network degree (and thus audience size) change the value of a platform in the presence of limited attention and effort.    

Joint work with René Kizilcec (Stanford, on the job market) and Eytan Bakshy (Facebook)

About the speaker
Dean Eckles is a social scientist, statistician, and assistant professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was previously a member of the Core Data Science team at Facebook. He studies how interactive technologies affect human behavior by mediating, amplifying, and directing social influence — and the statistical methods to study these processes. Dean’s current work uses large field experiments and observational studies. His research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and other peer-reviewed journals and proceedings in computer science, marketing, and statistics. Dean holds degrees from Stanford University in philosophy (BA), cognitive science (BS, MS), statistics (MS), and communication (PhD).
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Dec 02, 2016