‘Like’ This Article Online? Your Friends Will Probably Approve, Too, Scientists Say

But surprisingly, an unfair negative reaction will not spur others to dislike the article. Instead, a thumbs-down view will soon be counteracted by thumbs up from other readers.

Those are the implications of new research looking at the behavior of thousands of people reading online comments, scientists reported Friday in the journal Science. A positive nudge, they said, can set off a bandwagon of approval.

“Hype can work,” said one of the researchers, Sinan K. Aral, a professor of information technology and marketing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “and feed on itself as well.”

If people tend to herd together on popular opinions, that could call into question the reliability of “wisdom of the crowd” ratings on Web sites like Yelp or Amazon and perhaps provide marketers with hints on how to bring positive attention to their products.

“This is certainly a provocative study,” said Matthew O. Jackson, a professor of economics at Stanford who was not involved with the research. “It raises a lot of questions we need to answer.”

Besides Dr. Aral (who is also a scholar in residence at The New York Times research and development laboratory, working on unrelated projects), the researchers are from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and New York University.

They were interested in answering a question that long predates the iPhone and Justin Bieber: Is something popular because it is actually good, or is it popular just because it is popular?

To help answer that question, the researchers devised an experiment in which they could manipulate a small corner of the Internet: reader comments.

They collaborated with an unnamed Web site, the company did not want its involvement disclosed, on which users submit links to news articles. Readers can then comment on the articles, and they can also give up or down votes on individual comments. Each comment receives a rating calculated by subtracting negative votes from positive ones.

The experiment performed a subtle, random change on the ratings of comments submitted on the site over five months: right after each comment was made, it was given an arbitrary up or down vote, or — for a control group — left alone. Reflecting a tendency among the site’s users to provide positive feedback, about twice as many of these arbitrary initial votes were positive: 4,049 to 1,942.

The first person reading the comment was 32 percent more likely to give it an up vote if it had been already given a fake positive score. There was no change in the likelihood of subsequent negative votes. Over time, the comments with the artificial initial up vote ended with scores 25 percent higher than those in the control group.

“That is a significant change,” Dr. Aral said. “We saw how these very small signals of social influence snowballed into behaviors like herding.”

Meanwhile, comments that received an initial negative vote ended up with scores indistinguishable from those in the control group.

The Web site allows users to say whether they like or dislike other users, and the researchers found that a commenter’s friends were likely to correct the negative score while enemies did not find it worth their time to knock down a fake up vote.

The distortion of ratings through herding is not a novel concern. Reddit, a social news site that said it was not the one that participated in the study, similarly allows readers to vote comments up or down, but it also allows its moderators to hide those ratings for a certain amount of time. “Now a comment will more likely be voted on based on its merit and appeal to each user, rather than having its public perception influence its votes,” it explained when it unveiled the feature in April.

Duncan J. Watts, a scientist at Microsoft Research, said the overall findings fit with “cumulative advantage,” the idea that something that starts slightly more popular will build upon that popularity until it is far ahead of its competitors — and conversely, something that does not catch on will usually fade away whether or not it is good.

He cited the new crime novel “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” by Robert Galbraith, which received good reviews but tiny sales when it was released in April. When it was revealed that Galbraith was a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling, the book suddenly had the cumulative advantage conferred by the Harry Potter series and jumped to the top of best-seller lists.

“The biggest obstacle to success is just being noticed,” Dr. Watts said.

But opinions do not invariably follow popularity. In an earlier experiment by Dr. Watts, people listened to a list of songs ranked by popularity and were asked to rate them. But for some, the list was inverted — what they were told was the most popular song was actually the least popular.

The incorrect list did affect how listeners rated the songs — the good songs never achieved the same popularity as among listeners who were given the correct list, and the bad songs did better than they would have otherwise.

“But we also found, in a result that was somewhat consistent with the result here, that sometimes the songs were able to recover their sort of real ranking in spite of the manipulation,” Dr. Watts said. The listeners, he said, “in effect noticed that the song was better or worse than we had made it seem.”

Ad Veteran’s New Venture Relies on His Friends

A longtime advertising agency executive, art director and designer is looking to his “friends” for a little help with his new venture.

The executive is Marty Weiss, who is changing his most recent offering, Meter Industries, a brand design and marketing consultancy in New York, into what he is calling Marty Weiss and Friends. The new agency joins a list of Mr. Weiss’s workplaces that also includes Chiat/Day; Weiss, Whitten, Carroll, Stagliano; Weiss Stagliano Partners; and TBWA/Chiat/Day.

The “Friends” in the name is intended to suggest the agency’s model, which is becoming an increasingly familiar one in the advertising business; other examples include Co Collective. Mr. Weiss plans to assemble an appropriate team for each project or assignment from a core group of industry people he knows and firms he has worked with — they will become his case-by-case collaborators.

“I’m not even sure ‘agency’ is the right word,” Mr. Weiss said, “because it’s a bit of an anti-agency.”

Mr. Weiss is promoting his new venture with a campaign in social media, which includes declarations like this one: “We’re not a big holding company. We’re a big hugging company.”

One ad advising that “Meter Industries is now Marty Weiss and Friends” offers a cheeky explanation for the name change: “My therapist suggested I put myself more front and center.”

Among the collaborators on Mr. Weiss’s list are Jon Bond, of agencies like Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners and Big Fuel; Megan Kent, of agencies that include Bouchez, Kent, JWT and Starfish; and Lance Porigow, of agencies like Profero. The roster of “friends” also includes JSC Consumer Insights, Skimatics Web Works and Thinkers and Makers.

“What Marty is doing is not unusual right now,” Ms. Kent said, because many people who used to work for well-known agencies “have developed such a network of associates that it’s easy to reach out to the best in breed” and form what she described as “merry bands of all-stars.”

There are other factors fueling the trend, she said, as some people on Madison Avenue “don’t want to work for The Man anymore” and others consider themselves to be “more interested in the ideas than the office politics.”

Mr. Bond said the formation of Marty Weiss and Friends was another example of how much looser the business is now than it used to be.

In fact, when asked what his appearance on Mr. Weiss’s roster means, Mr. Bond replied, laughing, “I guess it means if something comes up we can both work on, he’ll call me.”

Mr. Bond said he would work with Mr. Weiss on entrepreneurial ventures in the spirit of Mr. Bond’s own company, Tomorrow L.L.C., which takes stakes in agencies, media companies and other firms. “Don’t be telling people I’m going to work on their advertising,” Mr. Bond said.

A longtime client of Mr. Weiss’s said he approved of the new venture.

“The key to the success of our campaign is really Marty,” said Chester Brandes, president and chief executive of Imperial Brands, for whom Mr. Weiss created a campaign for Sobieski vodka that carries the theme “The truth about vodka.”

“Having worked with a number of big agencies, what that proved to me is that you don’t need a big agency and a team of 40 people to get brilliant creative,” Mr. Brandes said.

More Business Travelers Stay With Friends Instead of in Hotels

Under pressure to hold down costs, some business travelers are finding that the best way to save on a hotel is not to stay in one at all.

Instead, they are staying in the homes and apartments of friends and relatives when they have to go out of town.

The savings can be substantial. Andrew Schrage, founder of the financial advice Web site Money Crashers, said in an e-mail that the amount “depends on the city, but one can save more than $100 per day when you factor in lodging, food and transportation.” He added, “Once I realized how much money can be saved by staying with friends or family, it’s always my first choice whenever the opportunity is available.”

Mr. Schrage, 26, has even built the savings into bonuses for his staff. “If they chose to stay with a friend, family member or co-worker, we calculate what the lodging would have cost and issue them a cash bonus of 30 percent of that amount,” he said.

Betsy Flanagan, a social media specialist in the San Francisco area who is vice president for student engagement at Ivy Bridge College, a subsidiary of the online educational program Altius Education, said she thought she had saved “$1,000 to $3,000 a year over the past few years” by staying with friends and family, or “maybe a little bit more.”

One of her biggest savings came in 2007, when she attended the five-day PodCamp new media conference in New York. The conference’s host hotel cost $300 a night. She stayed instead with a former college roommate in Connecticut — an hour’s train ride, $20 round-trip, from Manhattan. “It was worth it for me for the cost,” she said, adding that she enjoyed the side benefit of visiting a friend, but “it wasn’t as easy as staying in the conference hotel.”

Ms. Flanagan said staying with friends was part of a larger savings strategy. “I am also very frugal with buying airfare,” she said. She will buy plane tickets a year in advance if she can, she said, and she has tried to get free conference badges by volunteering.

The payoff was more than simply saving on a particular trip. By being careful with her spending, Ms. Flanagan could afford “to go to conferences and learn things and therefore change my career,” she said.

Entrepreneurs said that saving on travel allowed them to use their money more effectively when their businesses were in the fragile, early stages. Shannon Payette Seip, co-founder of Bean Sprouts, a line of cafes, products, books and television shows focusing on healthy eating for children, said friends had also given social support and strategic advice.

“It’s great to have cheerleaders for you and your company, but also to save money until the deals fall into place,” said Ms. Seip, 39, who lives in Madison, Wis. Also, she said, “if we were in a hotel room, it would mean lying around and doing other things, TV, vegging, instead of talking or using it as meeting time.”

Dana Humphrey, who owns Whitegate Public Relations in New York, said she used the fact that she saves money by staying with friends and family as a competitive strategy. “It is a selling point for me,” she said. When she attended a pet show in Washington, for instance, she told one of her pet product clients that “they don’t have to pay for me to stay there, because I have friends in D.C.”

Ms. Humphrey, 29, added that she enjoyed the social aspect of seeing her friends on business trips. “My whole point is to get on these trips to visit friends,” she said.

But the stays are not always trouble-free. Ms. Humphrey said she could work “anywhere as long as I have a cellphone and Internet.” But that can be a challenge when friends have bad Internet connections.

“I am a demanding guest,” she said. “I don’t just want to be here for free. I want the Internet when I arrive.”

Some travelers said they used the Internet to find free or inexpensive places to stay. They search on Craigslist, as well as on paying sites like AirBnB, which allows people to rent apartments or rooms inexpensively, and CouchSurfing.com.

In an e-mail, Ms. Humphrey said that she had used CouchSurfing, “mainly with my sister,” but that she would not use it for a business trip. “Usually CouchSurfers are very open-minded and cool,” she said.

When staying with friends or family, boundary issues are to be expected. Mr. Schrage, the Money Crashers founder, said he had encountered “privacy issues when staying with friends or having them stay with me, more so than when I stay with family members.” With relatives, he said, “rules regarding privacy and boundaries are generally understood.”

William D. Pitney, 43, a financial planner in the San Francisco area, said he often stayed with relatives or friends when traveling. To avoid potential tensions, he recommended that business travelers “set the boundaries before you get into the situation.” He said travelers should ask several questions, including, “How close are you to the relative or friend?” and, “If you approve me staying there, do we have to hang out? What do you expect?”

Additionally, he said, “When it comes to friends, I have to know their spouse and that the spouse approves.”

Mr. Pitney and others also suggested helping with household chores and buying groceries. “If by staying with a friend, I saved $800 to $1,500, from this to pay $100 for the food bill, I am still saving $700 to $1,400,” he said. He and other travelers also said they took their hosts to dinner as a thank-you.

Sometimes, the small size of friends’ apartments can be problematic. Ms. Seip, the Bean Sprouts entrepreneur, said that in 2010, she and her business partner, Kelly Parthen, 40, “cramped into a one-bedroom apartment in New York the night before our ‘Good Morning America’ taping.” Her host family, she said, “had a dog, our friend was pregnant and there were baby shower gifts all over the place.” Excited about the show the next morning, their friends also wanted to talk, though the two visitors preferred sleeping.

The two also had a fear that would not arise in a hotel. In addition to baby gifts, Ms. Seip said, “we brought food for the dog, so the dog would not eat our props.” Starting a company, she added, “is a very strange road.”