Comments on: Evolution of Ideas

By: Wetten

Wetten — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:22:32 +0000

“The big problem is that we donâ€™t always accept when weâ€™ve failed.”

Oh so true (unfortunately…)

Phil

By: Kurt

Kurt — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:23:15 +0000

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/

By: Andrew Cantino

Andrew Cantino — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 08:33:05 +0000

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.

By: Chandan Maruthi

Chandan Maruthi — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:38:49 +0000

Web2.0 is all about collective participation. Here is a concept for â€œConsumer Led Innovationâ€ harnessing Web2.0. Find more here->http://chandanscorner.blogspot.com/

By: Britney

Britney — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 01:20:48 +0000

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

By: chartreuse (BETA) » Blog Archive » Daily Remix (3/24)

chartreuse (BETA) » Blog Archive » Daily Remix (3/24) — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:04:51 +0000

[...] How toÂ fail fastÂ and why that is suchÂ a good thingÂ [From a cool new (to me!) blog: Bokardo] [...]

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:31:07 +0000

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

By: Noah Brier

Noah Brier — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:19:31 +0000

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.

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 14:24:47 +0000

Hi Mr. Porter,

Another good reading, thanks.

However, personally, I would change â€œthe Wisdom of Crowds is an important idea in Web 2.0â€ for â€œthe Wisdom of Crowds is an important ideaâ€. 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 â€œ(Before you start complaining about the term Web 2.0, go read this)â€ 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 â€œWeb 2.0â€ 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

By: Pete Cashmore

Pete Cashmore — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 12:43:41 +0000

“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.

By: everybuddy.org » Web users are the stakeholders

everybuddy.org » Web users are the stakeholders — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:46:20 +0000

[...] This post by Joshua Porter nicely sums up the changes in the way we must approach web projects if we want them to succeed, including iterative development (release early and often) and the idea of user-centric development. Any software developer would be insane if they developed a product that didn’t have the stakeholders involved from the beginning and throughout the whole project. Why then do we need to remind ourselves to let web users guide where our web products wshould go. They are the primary stakeholders, are they not. Mar 22 2006 04:45 pm | Uncategorized and joshuaporter | [...]

By: Adam Green

Adam Green — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 18:13:26 +0000

“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.