March 22nd, 2006

Evolution of Ideas

by Joshua Porter | 12 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/391

As I mentioned the other day, the Wisdom of Crowds is an important idea in Web 2.0. (Before you start complaining about the term Web 2.0, go read this). And, like many other ideas being taught to us by the network, the Wisdom of Crowds is counter-intuitive. Even so, it represents with great clarity the notion that we’re learning a tremendous amount about how we work, how we relate to each other, and how the world relates to us.

But why is this happening now? Why are we finding so much innovation and ideas popping up now? Is it because technology has reached a certain level of functionality? I don’t think so. Is it because it wasn’t true before? I don’t think that, either.

I think our observations of what seems to be working and what seems to be not working have finally changed the way we think about the world. I think we’re just getting used to the Web and the implications that it has on our lives. It takes years for people to change the way they think. Some never do.

We have never before lived in a time when we get such quick feedback from a whole network of people. If your new web application fails to grow after its initial release, you can bet that something is not right with it. It should, at the very least, be growing slowly if people are happy with it.

Similarly, as has been talked about in open source software for years, we can fail incredibly fast. If we do so, all it takes is accepting it, learning from it, and moving on to improve next time.

The big problem is that we don’t always accept when we’ve failed. And in not accepting it, we can’t learn from it. And if we don’t learn from it, we can’t move beyond it.

In other words, our actions and reactions need to happen in real time. We need to accept the rules of the network, whatever they may be, and adapt to them. They will not adapt to us.

When we become accepting of new ideas such as the Wisdom of Crowds, we open ourselves up to more of them. When we do that, we’re barely able to keep up. It’s evolution of ideas in action, and it’s wonderful.

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Comments

1. Adam Green 1:13pm, Wed 22nd, 2006

“Is it because technology has reached a certain level of functionality?” No, technological determinism is much too simplistic. The answer is emergence. If the right people do the right things with the right software on the right network, unexpected properties emerge.

2. Pete Cashmore 7:43am, Thu 23rd, 2006

“If your new web application fails to grow after its initial release, you can bet that something is not right with it. ”

Agreed. This can be related to Danah Boyd’s analysis that MySpace succeeded by adapting to what its users wanted. And if you come up with a service that isn’t great to begin with, you can still avoid failure by evolving the service to better suit your users.

3. Fred 9:24am, Thu 23rd, 2006

Hi Mr. Porter,

Another good reading, thanks.

However, personally, I would change “the Wisdom of Crowds is an important idea in Web 2.0” for “the Wisdom of Crowds is an important idea”. Okay, it enter into the Web 2.0 definition war thing, so I will stop right now; but I was amused to read this yesterday “(Before you start complaining about the term Web 2.0, go read this)” after what I wrote on my blog about your previous article. However I have to say that you are right with that definition.

I would like to answer to Mr. Green. I do not agree with that for a couple of reasons. The technological determinist could seems too simplistic, but I have to say that all these recent innovations would had been impossible a couple of years ago. Why? Check who created Flickr, Del.icio.us, Digg, etc… all these “Web 2.0” heroes… who created them? Mostly hobbyist with a second job to make a living, or people that were using their savings to start the projects. It was only possible with the cheap broadband we have today, with the emergence of good open source technologies (no licensing costs) and gigabytes of hard drive space for pennies. It could seem simplistic, but it is a reality.

Salutations,

Fred

4. Noah Brier 10:19am, Thu 23rd, 2006

I think you’re right on about the web starting to mature. It’s still so early in the medium’s development and we often forget. The vast majority of people still look at the web as an online newspaper/way to send mail electronically. We are only in the very early stages of moving past the old metaphors and onto new ones.

I also believe the web’s ability to make us think about how we think is incredibly powerful. The network architecture and linking gives us a picture, albeit rough, of ways our brains work. I think it’s this metacognition that is creating the fertile ground for innovation.

5. Josh 10:31am, Thu 23rd, 2006

Fred…done. The Wisdom of Crowds is an important idea…regardless of where we’re talking about.

6. Britney 8:20pm, Sun 2nd, 2006

I can not wait to surf the web 2.0 tired of reading about it and ready to play on it!

7. Chandan Maruthi 7:38am, Tue 4th, 2006

Web2.0 is all about collective participation.

Here is a concept for “Consumer Led Innovation” harnessing Web2.0. Find more here->http://chandanscorner.blogspot.com/

8. Andrew Cantino 4:33am, Sun 16th, 2006

I think the wisdom of crowds is critical to many smart applications. Google PageRank is all about mining emergent crowd knowledge. Many other applications can take advantage of this sort of thing as well. My Freebie Finder, for example, only adds links when it can verify them across multiple sources, thus removing things like Free iPod gimmicks because the embedded ID makes the URL unique.

9. Kurt 11:23am, Tue 25th, 2006

To follow up on Pete’s comment above, its obvious that failure to attract new users means you’re doing something wrong – that’s not a ‘web 2.0′ concept at all – its common business sense. The meme that I find has direct applicability to applying Wisdom of Crowds to web application is boxxet founder, You mon Tsang’s bionic systems concept. To get that initial pop of new user attraction, you need to amplify, not just aggregate, the value of each users participation with the system. There is a distinction between an app that leverages “Wisdom of Crowds” in a direct way – eBay’s ranking, for example, and one that has an amplifying effect – flickr’s interestingness algorythm. The point is that its not good enough anymore to simply leverage the wisdom of your users, you need to maximize the participation of each user. See Tsang’s post for more… http://seedround.com/bionic-systems-amplify-participation

Or my own reaction…
http://kvoelker.blogsome.com/2006/03/10/attention-scarcitys-impact-on-social-applications/

10. Wetten 10:22am, Tue 30th, 2007