Is Wikipedia more authoritative than we think?

Naysayers who feel that Wikipedia lacks credibility may be interested in an investigation that compared the accuracy of articles in Wikipedia with those in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Interestingly, the investigators found, that for a sampling of science articles, Wikipedia actually had fewer errors. The key, of course, is getting a critical mass of credible subject matter experts to participate in the effort so that we can leverage Surowiecki's "wisdom of crowds" which is really just what fellow blogger Tom Hamilton likes to reference as the "regression to the mean," the assumption being that the mean brings us closer to the truth. See the Nature magazine article for more details.

Though I may not be an expert, I myself contributed to the Wikipedia article that we saw today in class on Boston University's Graduate School of Management by correcting a number of unfortunate typos and grammatical mistakes. While this may be more artificial artifical intelligence ala Amazon's Mechanical Turk effort than it is authorship, it does show the value of collaborative efforts.

Mash-ups

Please take a look at Programmabelweb site. It has a good summary of all the major mashups. The blogs there are also useful.

Basecamp and Web 2.0

I like Basecamp, project collaboration tool, as an interesting example of some Web 2.0 trends. Based on the idea that projects fail due to lack of communication, the web-based software is dedicated to doing one thing (facilitating communication) and doing it well.

Also significant is their business model, based on the try-for-free and pay if you like it model. They reinforce this by running a great blog, Signals vs. Noise, that focuses on innovation, agile software development, and their philosophy toward product design. It also gives customers a great deal of transparency into the company, a forum to be an active part of future development.

Web 2.0 and the value of information

We touched on this theme in class, but I wanted to delve a little bit more into the idea of decreasing value of information in the "always on" world. The proliferation of huge amounts of information on the web, whether it is from Wikipedia, blogs, or YouTube, has created a situation that requires individuals to develop and hone the ability to internally filter information as it is encountered. Unfortunately the predominant approach to consuming information is still an "old world" approach, where you simply trust the information that you are presented with, because you trust the source.

I believe that this is the little discussed but most important aspect of adapting to a Web 2.0 world. Understanding that information is not sourced on the Internet means that we have a responsibility to ensure that the information we consume has reliability. As consumers of information and members of the information generation, we all need to develop the skill to filter information ourselves, with potentially dire consequences if we cannot.

Unfortunately, as producers of information (from a personal or business standpoint), there is once again more work to be done to ensure that the information out in the world about your products and services is accurate.

Wikipedia & Microsoft

I found it interesting that Microsoft landed itself in some trouble when it was discovered recently that they offered to pay a blogger to "correct" Wikipedia articles about the company. Apparently, while anyone can post and edit a Wikipedia article, the site does attempt to prevent those with a "conflict of interest" from posting content and "slanting" entries. They try to block content submitted by public-relations firms, campaign workers, etc.
In the long run I think it's impossible to stop a bias from forming if enough people post content leaning one way or the other on an issue. The real question is where does the truth lie and can we take a Wikipedia article at face value?


CNN Article about Microsoft & Wikipedia

The meaning of Web 2.0

According to Wikipedia's definition of Web 2.0:

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004,^[1] refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and since 2004 some technicians and marketers have adopted the catch-phrase. Its exact meaning remains open to debate, and some experts, notably Tim Berners Lee, have questioned whether the term has meaning.^[2]

The last, compact, definition of Web 2.0, according to Tim O'Reilly is this one:

"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I've elsewhere called 'harnessing collective intelligence.')". ^[3]

To summarize, web 2.0 sites are those that utilize user-generated content and rely on network effects to increase and maintain their value. Sites such as YouTube, Craigslist, MySpace, and even Wikipedia itself, are all prime examples of web 2.0 sites. Of these, I think Craigslist fits the description the best. The site relies exclusively on user-generated content, there are social networking aspects to the site, and its value is directly related to the number of users using it. It serves over 5 billion page views per month, putting it in 34th place overall among web sites world wide, 8th place overall among web sites in the United States (per Alexa.com on December 29, 2006), to 10 million unique visitors. With over 10 million new classified ads each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over 500,000 new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world. The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements, to personal ads and many others.

How Motorola fits into the matrix.

• The matrix shows how Motorola fits into this model. Further details are listed below for each of the images.


• Bandwidth Law . . . a router that supports 870 MHz (product), a faster and more robust home network (process), and the ability to talk through VoIP (service).


• Metcalf’s Law . . . the new Qwerty with the ability to stay connected to all mediums all the time (product), the person-to-person interaction on the voice network using Motorola technology (process), and Motorola Mesh Broadband technology increasing the reach of the network (service).


• Moore’s Law . . . the portable workstation/laptop that is able to perform at higher and higher speeds and memory levels (product), the integration of Bluetooth technology into items such as these sunglasses (process), and Motorola iRadio (service).