Web 2.0: Collective Intelligence

By Nicola Carruthers, Samantha Lewis, Hannah Harris-Turner, Yusef Mustafa

What is Collective Intelligence?• “Collective intelligence is the information/intelligence that results from

collaborator involvement, input and insight from various people. It is a pool of content resulting from the combined effort of multiple persons with specific knowledge.” (Noubel, JK, 2009)

• It Utilizes what people do on the web to benefit other web users. E.g. Last.fm music allows people to see what others are listening to and then allows you to listen.

• The more popular the website is, the more valuable it becomes.

• “Hyper linking is the foundation of the web. As users add new content, and new sites, it is bound in to the structure of the web by other users discovering the content and linking to it.” – O’Reilly

Like Wikipedia, social networking sites such as MySpace has become just as influential on the web. MySpace is about ownership, you can tell more from someone’s MySpace page about their character when the page doesn’t remain to be anonymous. It can be seen as more of a richer source of information than Wikipedia in terms of researching general opinions of films or music artists for example. As Wikipedia entries remain to be edited by anonymous internet users, it’s use is more helpful for general knowledge rather than public opinion.

Popular sites such as Flickr have pioneered a new term known as ‘Folksonomy’ – where many sites categorize keywords or ‘tags’. Allowing numerous associations that are commonly used and not specifically kept within strict categories. The popularity of tagging shows how information can be shared worldwide, user-generated content also provides and shares information in a way which the creators of the social networking sites don’t have to keep continuously creating information.

• Twitter on the other hand operates using ‘hash tags’ which in real time provide the information to anyone in the world if they’re tweeting about something in particular, with the results even becoming available in Google. Hash tags allow you to create communities of people interested in the same topic by making it easier for them to find and share info related to it.

Advantages•New social structures, new forms of governance, new relationship between the individual and the group, new economies, new political powers are in formation in the cyber layer, competing with the current social organization.

•The sheer volume of information

•The rapidity and frequency with which it can be updated

•The constant checking of facts by users.

DisadvantagesCollective intelligence has two limitations:

In size: - Only a small number of users can interact before it reaches a too high level of difficulty that creates more “spam” than useful results.

In distance: - Individuals need to be together within a small range so that everyone can contribute and get a view of the whole.The greater the human associations became (cities, companies), the more they had to find other ways of organizing themselves.

When faced with shared or group information about a certain brand or product, there will be differing representations on how that product works or the benefits and features associated with the product. This means that consumers will become confused with the different information at hand and will not know what to believe. (Lang, P, 2009) Advertisers have to be careful with this as consumers will start to think of their brand and products as untrustworthy and will not consider them in their purchase decisions. (Lang, P, 2009)

Disadvantages

Bibliography- Kidd, S. (2010) Wikis and Collective Intelligence, Retrieved: 1st November, 2011, Available from, http://simonkidd.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/wikis-and-collective-intelligence/

- Lanier, J. (2006) Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism, Edge. Retrieved: 2nd November 2011, Available from: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html

- Noubel, JF. (2006) What is Collective Intelligence? Retrieved 1st November, 2011, Available from http://www.masternewmedia.org/2003/05/27/what_is_collective_intelligence.htm

- Google Images

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WjJdQfLtTk