October 23, 2006 at 18:27Filters of the collective mind find talent in the crowd
Next-generation services filter the “wisdom of crowds” to extract the pearls of expert knowledge. Such services are a kind of cross between collective sites, like Wikipedia , with expert sites. This is also interesting because collective and expert sites are customarily opposed to each other, and here we see a curious combination of their functionality.
One of the very first “filters for collective intelligence” that appeared on the Internet more than three years ago is Marketocracy, numbering 55 thousand users. This is a free service where people can test themselves in the game on the exchange. Each participant receives a certain amount of virtual dollars and access to the exchange simulator, which exactly duplicates the ups and downs of shares on a real exchange, in real time. The most interesting thing is that the organizers of the virtual exchange closely monitor the successes of their “chicks”. Each month, the hundred best investors are selected, and their virtual portfolio becomes the basis for a real investment fund.
Another example is PicksPal.com, where more than 100 thousand registered participants compete in predicting the results of sports competitions. The company periodically makes a rating of the 30 best experts and daily sells their forecasts to the public in packages of $ 20 for five pieces.
In principle, similar approaches to “crowd filtering” can be used in various fields of activity: including in pop culture. Projects like "Star Factory" or Comedy Club , which have become popular recently, are theoretically based on the same idea of finding talent in a large group of users.
The idea of filtering in pop culture is more clearly manifested by the example of artists who become real stars by uploading home-made videos or recordings of their songs to social networks with amateur content, such as MySpace and YouTube . Here the filtering of the most interesting content is carried out automatically - all conditions are specially created for this.
One of the very first “filters for collective intelligence” that appeared on the Internet more than three years ago is Marketocracy, numbering 55 thousand users. This is a free service where people can test themselves in the game on the exchange. Each participant receives a certain amount of virtual dollars and access to the exchange simulator, which exactly duplicates the ups and downs of shares on a real exchange, in real time. The most interesting thing is that the organizers of the virtual exchange closely monitor the successes of their “chicks”. Each month, the hundred best investors are selected, and their virtual portfolio becomes the basis for a real investment fund.
Another example is PicksPal.com, where more than 100 thousand registered participants compete in predicting the results of sports competitions. The company periodically makes a rating of the 30 best experts and daily sells their forecasts to the public in packages of $ 20 for five pieces.
In principle, similar approaches to “crowd filtering” can be used in various fields of activity: including in pop culture. Projects like "Star Factory" or Comedy Club , which have become popular recently, are theoretically based on the same idea of finding talent in a large group of users.
The idea of filtering in pop culture is more clearly manifested by the example of artists who become real stars by uploading home-made videos or recordings of their songs to social networks with amateur content, such as MySpace and YouTube . Here the filtering of the most interesting content is carried out automatically - all conditions are specially created for this.