Comments on: On Browse

By: StrayPackets » Social Software or Glossy Magazine, It’s All A Conversation

Wed, 17 May 2006 18:45:35 +0000

[...] Joshua Porter says something smart about social software. Porter suggests “we can aggregate the wisdom of crowds, but only under certain circumstances and perhaps only for so long without evolving our systems.” [...]

By: Daniel Szuc

Daniel Szuc — Sun, 07 May 2006 05:09:19 +0000

Hi Josh: passed this onto Jared and amazing stuff.

Jo Wong (http://www.apogeehk.com/jo.html) passed me an article from the ‘Asian Wall Street Journal’ on a site in China that allows people to come together when they want to negotiate a deal on the same product they are interested in buying e.g “the team purchase”.

May generate some interesting discussion on Brainsparks - http://www.51tuangou.com (available in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou). Don’t think there is an English site.

Are there similar services in the US?

By: David Swedlow

David Swedlow — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 22:51:13 +0000

While we’re mentioning criteria, don’t forget “diversity.”

So far, the web2.0 tools attract a fairly narrow and uniform band of the collective. Almost all of the aggregators harvest the madness of crowds rather than the wisdom. In fact, I believe this is a primary reason that a lot of people refute the validity of Surowiecki’s claims.

The Opposable Mind idea emphasizes this point; just like the value of the thumb is the opposablity factor, harnessing the opposability of minds is a goal we should be giving more attention.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 19:57:52 +0000

Pete, I was just writing up that same point…some are saying that this means the end of “wisdom of crowds”, but according to the theory it is not.

When I read Surowieki’s book I was surprised at how strict the rules of a aggregable crowd are. Not all systems apply. I think that much effort has been put into the aggregation part, but not necessarily the independence part. (decentralization is usually built in)

Thanks for pointing that out…

By: Pete Cashmore

Pete Cashmore — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 17:22:29 +0000

Interesting stuff. The thing we’ve got to remember about the Wisdom of Crowds is that decisions must be independent - Digg is emphatically not a Wisdom of Crowds system because users can see how others have voted. A single incorrect piece of info then leads to an info cascade, with everyone just copying those that went before them. I caught a site called SocialPicks yesterday that’s doing a similar thing with stocks.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 12:32:20 +0000

Also, perhaps, of general interest is James Surowiecki’s SXSW 2006 presentation, “The Wisdom of Crowds” -
http://server1.sxsw.com/2006/coverage/SXSW06.INT.20060311.WisdomOfCrowds.mp3

…a great listen.