The Dirty Little Secret About the "Wisdom of the Crowds" - There is No Crowd

Read/WriteWeb by Sarah Perez | Sep. 17, 2009 (Opinion)

Recent research by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Vassilis Kostakos pokes a big hole in the prevailing wisdom that the "wisdom of crowds" is a trustworthy force on today's web. His research focused on studying the voting patterns across several sites featuring user-generated reviews including Amazon, IMDb, and BookCrossing. The findings showed that a small group of users accounted for a large number of ratings. In other words, as many have ... Full Story »

Posted by Fabrice Florin

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Subjects: Media, Business, Sci/Tech, Health
Topics: Social Networks, New Media, Internet, Psychology
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Posted by: Posted by Fabrice Florin - Sep 17, 2009 - 3:02 PM PDT
Reviewed by: Fabrice Florin (review), Jim Lang (review), Ari Hakkarainen (review), Paul-André Raymond (review)
Content Type: Article
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Edited by: Fabrice Florin - Sep 17, 2009 - 3:02 PM PDT
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3.9
 by Jim Lang - Sep. 18, 2009

This piece is principally a comment on the research of a Carnegie Mellon University professor that has shown that ratings on some the web's most popular sites are controlled by a small group rather than a mass representative of the population at large. Short without much depth but well reasoned and well presented.

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4.5
 by Paul-André Raymond - Sep. 20, 2009
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3.6
 by Fabrice Florin - Sep. 17, 2009
Fabrice posted this story.
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4.2
 by Ari Hakkarainen - Sep. 18, 2009
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