March 17th, 2006

The One Crucial Idea of Web 2.0

by Joshua Porter  |   18 Comments  |  shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/382

Listening to James Surowiecki’s talk on the Wisdom of Crowds (mp3) at the SXSW Conference (I’m attending vicariously), I was struck at how pervasive this idea has become in such a short period of time. And the reason, of course, is the success of Google’s Pagerank algorithm, which harnesses the wisdom of crowds to model the way we value content.

If there is one idea that encapsulates what Web 2.0 is about, one idea that wasn’t a factor before but is a factor now, it’s the idea of leveraging the network to uncover the Wisdom of Crowds. Forget Ajax, APIs, and other technologies for a second. The big challenge is aggregating whatever tidbits of digitally-recorded behavior we can find, making some sense of it algorithmically, and then uncovering the wisdom of crowds through a clear and easy interface to it.

Some folks like to point to technology as the heart and soul of Web 2.0. I don’t think so. The heart and soul of Web 2.0 is the new ideas that drive technological and social innovation, and the one crucial idea is the one found in Surowiecki’s seminal book. It has forever altered the way that software is written.

And the evidence is mounting. Today, Richard MacManus writes of the new features on Rojo, and in explaining what they are Chris Alden tells Richard that they’re emulating Pagerank:

“How do we do it? (determine relevance) Generally, just like Google used link metadata to determine relevance of search results, there is a fair amount of metadata we can use to infer relevance, including how many people are reading, tagging, and voting for a story, how popular the feed is — both to you personally, to your contacts, and to all readers, as well as things like link data and content analysis. ” (emphasis mine)

The end result is relevance engines, filters, recommendation systems, Web 2.0 software, or whatever you want to call it. And Surowiecki brilliantly sums it all up.

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Comments

1.  Bill H-D 10:24am, Fri 17th, 2006

This is where questions about the popularity of Paris Hilton and Huey Long start to complicate things. Both figures emerged as crowd favorites for what history shows to be suspect reasons. So there may be a time factor here, but there is also reason to mistrust the wisdom of crowds when the formula for aggregation effectively squashes credible voices of dissent.

2.  Ipseity 12:22pm, Fri 17th, 2006

Interesting observations. However, as much as wisdom/analytics web2 can extract from the crowd, one can’t help but to see so many individuals can’t even figure out what their own wisdoms lay. This is the opposite of the problem you posed, but it’s ultimately where everything starts.

I don’t see web2 mentions it. And I don’t see an infrastructure that would faciliate the discovery of their ipseity (Identity2 is probably closet to it). Should we wait for web3 for it?

3.  Josh 12:36pm, Fri 17th, 2006

Yes, it becomes immediately complicated by Paris Hilton. Who is Huey Long? :)

Mistrusting the wisdom of crowds is probably healthy, as it can kill personal relevance. And there are many other problems with it…but even still it seems to me that it is *the* hot problem to solve in software.

Once we have the wisdom of crowds and all that aggregation can do for us, I think we will then look to filtering mechanisms to put us back in charge.

4.  Pete Cashmore 9:57am, Sat 18th, 2006

Bill H-D’s example is good, but I think what it comes down to is aggregating the wisdom of *my* crowd, not *the* crowd. I think the notion of tribes is a good one – Digg users, for instance, don’t choose the stories I want to read. Memeorandum comes closer, but still misses the mark. Ultimately, we’re heading towards more personalized filters, powered by the wisdom of similar people and our own attention metadata.

5.  Uzi Shmilovici 12:54pm, Sat 18th, 2006

Josh.

I think tagging makes the wisdom of the crowds wiser – then ayou get a wise wisdom of the crowd.

For Paris Hilton’s fans, this relevabt results are crucial. I mean, they look for it. Assuming you are not one of them. you will not look for her and so you will not have to bump into her. (Although you might want to….).

I do have a problem with Google’s page rand as it is affected by SEM/SEO companies and thus becomes a marketing expenditure rank and not a real one…

6.  Jon Husband 1:58pm, Sat 18th, 2006

#5 focuses the issue for me .. I think it’s the both/and of increasing use of AI where apropriate, coupled with increasing ease of use such that the hand and eye become increasingly extensions of the brain.

So .. easier-to-use apps coupled with AI-enhancement (of the natural language-processing sort) where and how appropriate, all mashed up with the sociologies that continue to grow on the Web

7.  Josh 8:34am, Sun 19th, 2006

Yes, I like the notion of tribes, too. I think that we’ll be able to model our lives on several levels, as we live them on several levels.

Right now I’m trying to figure out what level of personalization I want…do I want it automated or do I want some control…and if so, what kind of control do I want?

8.  Michael Almond 3:17pm, Thu 23rd, 2006

Joshua,
What can I say to further prove my admiration for you. You always get the big picture and communicate it in a way that is persuasive, logical, and without righteousness Bravo.

I happen to be bias because I tend to agree with most every thing you write. This particular post gave me goose bumps. I just submitted an article that states the same idea. Of course, it has an overall theme that is unique, but Web 2.0 makes it into the story. I assert that the truly significant aspect of Web 2.0 is the discovery and growing awareness of what has always been a fundamental and enduring aspect of the Web:

It’s value as a social tool.

Thank you again.

9.  Donavan Vicha 3:01pm, Fri 21st, 2006

When I think of the possible fallacy of this Wisdom of the Crowds, I think … Betamax vs VHS, Word vs WordPerfect, Windows … !! In the early 1990s, Atari built a great computer where the OS was on a chip (can you say Virus-proof?), so RAM could be devoted to handling the application … The GUI was a wonderful combination of the Mac and PC but the “wisdom of the crowd”? Atari was a game machine, a toy …