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

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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Jim Lang
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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