Three lies about social software
From the blog of JP Rangaswami.
Shortish post about 3 viewpoints of social software (Social software causes groupthink and herd behaviour, Social software is full of inaccuracies and downright lies and Social software destroys privacy), each in turn addressed by JP. The first aspect looks at the wisdom of crowds being akin to group think and in turn demonstrating the the ignorance of crowds. JP cites Kathy Sierra’s post ” The wisdom of crowds comes not from the consensus decision of the group, but from the aggregation of the ideas/thoughts/decisions of each individual in the group. At its simplest form, it means that if you take a bunch of people and ask them (as individuals) to answer a question, the average of each of those individual answers will likely be better than if the group works together to come up with a single answer.”. Which is why user comments on amazon products or reviews in IMDB can be likened to blog entry comments. When I read such comments I usually round up the main arguements in my head, summarise them and then make my own judgement.
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