Wisdom of the Crowds?
Brad Stone of the New York Times wrote yesterday about the recent changes in the algorithm at Digg. The core of his article, along with comments from Slashdot founder Rob Malda, was to examine the strength of “Crowd Wisdom” as it pertains to Digg’s ability to raise more popular stories to the top of it’s home page.
There is a ton of activity right now focusing on the wisdom of crowds. Crowd sourcing, crowd wisdom, user generated…it seems as if the new capitalism is seeking low-cost growth through leveraging the average Joe (or Jane) to do their work for them. The problem, is that like any investment, there is a risk/reward proposition that must be adhered to and something so cheap, must have it’s costs, real or otherwise. For Digg, these costs come in the form of the potential to game the system and show less crowd based wisdom, and more small-clan strategery.
Tags: crowd sourcing, digg
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