Influx Insights Tag Feed: amazon

the demise of the expert

Influx Insights — 2008-01-26T12:22:32Z

If the continuing financial crisis has told us one thing, it’s that you can’t trust the experts. Everywhere you look supposed experts and authority figures seem to have been clueless; from the ratings agencies, to governments and senior officers and large financial corporations.

It appears the experts where on a “lunch break” when we needed them most.

Perhaps the world has gotten too complex for experts and they need to band together in complex neural nets to have a grasp of what’s happening.

In other areas, it also seems that experts aren’t all that they appear to be. In a new era of community participation, individuals can emerge as de-facto experts, providing them have the ‘chops” and are seen by the community to be making valid contributions.

The concept has considerable appeal because they appear to have the “secret sauce” of objectivity. Amazon is often sited as the best example of this community of experts, where reviews are given great currency and can be massively persuasive in generating sales. However, according to Slate, these critics appear to be suffering because they have stressful full-time jobs, they’ve become the people they were supposed to replace and their skills and objectivity have to be called into question.

"However, by refashioning Web 2.0 as a proprietary marketplace, Amazon's reviewer rankings subject enthusiasts like Grady Harp to the same pressures that confront the professionals they were supposed to replace. To keep writing, lest another reviewer usurp one's spot. To say something nice, in hopes that someone will say something nice about you. And to read for work, rather than for pleasure. "I have a tall stack of books staring at me," Harp wrote, in a wistful moment."

When it becomes a job, who are they working for?

In fact, the world of the customer review has become a business, you can by a “plug and play” system for your website or brand to help bring that supposedly valued objectivity.

Everywhere you look it appears the expert is in trouble, bothered by a world that’s now too complex for them to understand or in danger of loosing their objectivity because they are bowing to commercial pressures.

In an expertless world, who should we be listening to?

Posted by Ed Cotton

users and their content: from a billion dollars to a merit badge

Influx Insights — 2008-01-03T02:57:14Z

In those long past heady days of 2006, there was talk amongst some analysts and bloggers that the creators of user-generated content would be getting paid lots of real cash for their hard work and effort.

There was a school of thought that said some of the billions should and might be shared amongst those who created the content in the first place.

There was obviously something of a disparity between the billions of dollars paid for a brand like YouTube, compared to the zero revenue that the creators were getting.

Critics also pointed figures at Digg for the same reason.

Of course, everyone was barking up the wrong tree; there's a big difference between valuation/purchase price and advertising revenue.

Now, on some sites, like YouTube, creators are getting a small slice of advertising revenue.

However, for most creators of content and given that "most" now includes people who put photos up on a Facebook page, there's no financial reward, just the warm glow of social connectivity.

So is this new world one where participants get zero reward for their efforts?

It looks as if some companies are looking to change this and bring in merit badges and virtual/"fools gold".

Amazon has a newish site called Askville...

"Askville is a place where you can share and discuss knowledge with other people by asking and answering questions on any topic. It’s a fun place to meet others with similar interests to you and a place where you can share what you know. You can learn something new everyday or help and meet others using your knowledge. Askville even helps you learn by giving you cool tools to help you find information online while you are answering questions. It’s all about sharing—what you know and what you want to know—so go ahead and meet someone new today and Askville!"

Answer questions on Askville and you will be given Quest Gold, which Amazon is only too happy to state is currently worth even less than the US dollar.

"Except for any special limited time redemption offers that we may make available from time to time, Quest gold are not redeemable for anything at this moment. Once Questville.com launches we hope to have exciting new ways to use your Quest gold. Until then, keep on stocking up on your Quest gold!"

People are going to be submitting answers and contributing content for the benefit of some potentially worthless virtual currency, albeit with the very cool name of Quest Gold.

The important thing to consider here is that while the currency has no material value, it still works rather well as a merit system.

It's much better than nothing because people like points systems, they can compare and compete and get some sort of satisfaction from that.

It's likely that we will see more merit and point systems around the social networks this year.

It's now time to forget the dreams of wealth sharing from Web 2.0 and instead realize the best thing the majority of content creators can expect for their efforts, is some virtual currency and a merit badge.

Via GigOm

Posted by Ed Cotton

people don't want ads to go away

Influx Insights — 2007-06-29T00:05:32Z

Doubleclick did an interesting piece of research last year, they asked consumers what forms of advertising (media) they thought worthwhile and what they would eliminate.

The results are somewhat suprising- despite living in a DVR world, only 7% would prefer to eliminate them, less than 2% would prefer to eliminate magazine or newspaper ads. They also found these traditional forms of media more worthwhile, than Amazon recommendations.

Less worthwhile and in-line for elimination; telemarketing, spam and pop-up ads that were rated more "evil' than spam.

Via Bankwatch

Posted by Ed Cotton