WebProNews

Wisdom of Consumer Crowds?

Following up on the theme of the rewiring of our brains, is the internet making us smarter consumers as well? There certainly seems to be evidence pointing in that direction.

The Wisdom of Wikis

Julian distinguishes between Wisdom of Crowds and what you could call the Wisdom of Wikis:

A Day Without Google Draws Crowds

A few brave souls have, from time to time, given up Google - quit using the search engine and all its related sites.  After an initial period of withdrawal, the experiments usually went pretty well.  Now Alt Search Engines is urging everyone to participate in A Day Without Google.

My Fox LA - Wisdom of Crowds Search

One interesting service that I learned about today was a site search service called Collarity. They offer a site based search service that can display community-clustered search results based on previous users actions. The service can also deliver optimized ads with the search results allowing publishers another way to monetize content.

Wisdom of Crowds Is Dead

The problem with the human condition is that it involves humans. Bringing that condition online, fostering it with the Wisdom of Crowds philosophy, is slowly but surely proving what philosophers have said since humans first learned to write: the anonymous mob is powerful and passionate, but no more rational than an angry swarm of bees.

Digg, Stumble & the Madness of Crowds

My friend and occasional sparring partner Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 has a good post today about the transitory nature of the Digg "flash crowd" phenomenon - the point being, as he puts it, that "not all traffic is created equal."

Digg Experts

While keeping informed and up to date about what is being written about Digg over the past several months I have come across a lot of information that really isn't that insightful or in some cases is even just plain wrong.

Wikiality: The Voice of The Crowd Is a Whisper

The Wisdom of Crowds idea is a beautiful and elegant theory, despite any Aristotelian reservations you may have about the masses. Internet visionaries have applied the concept as a slogan for the participatory Web, and a deathblow to elitist information dissemination. Only problem is, only the elite are participating.

SXSW Coverage

A quick directory of the flurry of SXSW posts from over the weekend.

SXSW: Wisdom Of Crowds

James Surowiecki, who wrote The Wisdom of Crowds, talked about the concepts in his book.