Comments on: Examples of the Wisdom of Crowds in Daily Life

By: EcoWater AZ

EcoWater AZ — Tue, 26 May 2009 23:34:18 +0000

I had no idea about the Ipod…I will have to check my skip count.

By: Derek Powazek

Derek Powazek — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:05:50 +0000

Tom: Digg is *just* a leaderboard. And Flickr’s leaderboard is calculated daily. Here’s yesterday’s.

Note that I’m not saying this is a good thing – in fact I know it’s not. But they’re there.

By: Tom Carden

Tom Carden — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:14:07 +0000

How do you tell the difference between Wisdom of Crowds and other, similar network effects like first-mover advantage, preferential attachment, winner-takes-all, etc?

Especially with the Limewire example I think this is worth bearing in mind – isn’t that why sites like Flickr and Digg expressly *don’t* have a leader board?

By: myla

myla — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:58:14 +0000

Brilliant article. And you’re right: Amazon.com rarely gets my recommendations right b/c I often use it to buy presents for other people. So while I might not like what it is they’re recommending (supposedly for me), the recommendations that are totally off base (case in point: Hannah Montana isn’t my thing, though my niece loves her) I’m sure you’re right, the folks I shop for probably would. Probably would help everyone if your gifting purchases could be classified so you could, let’s say, get “Recommendations for you, Myla Kent” and “Recommendations for your niece, Ashley”.

That would be far more useful for me.