| WebProWorld Post |
ARGH! Newletter software is still elusive
Anyone with a good newletter software or preferable WYSIWYG service that 'will allow me to import' my CSV or TXT list that I have built in my own outdated system.
Measuring why this site ranks higher than my own
Ahhh, the cry of frustrated web developers everywhere!!
When you see a site that just CAN'T rank in Google
that's higher than your own. Can anyone please supply
the metrics that Google has used to rank this site
vs mine?
How Do You and the Big Boys Charge For SEO?
OK this is a old topic and most individual consultants have their own comfortable ways that they charge clients, but my interest here is the big SEO's and how they charge.
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03.16.06
SXSW: Wisdom Of Crowds
 By
Christopher Carfi
James Surowiecki, who wrote The Wisdom of Crowds, talked about the concepts in his book.
Three examples of the phenomenon:
Race tracks
Jellybean counting
Guessing the weight of a cow
In "wise crowds," there are typically a few experts, a few people in the middle, and lot of people who individually have a high rate of error.
Yet...if you take the average of all the "guesses," the average is usually a very good approximation...in some cases, within a few percent (3%-5%) of the actual value. Surowiecki: "Results of the market map almost perfectly onto the outcomes of events."
There are a number of examples where the "collective guess" has provided good results:- Siemens (what will be the market lifespan of a product?)
- Google (how many users with GMail have after three quarters?)
- Eli Lilly (which drugs will make it through clinical trials?)
Why does this work?
Everyone participating in these markets has "some" idea of what the answers will be, but they also have biases.
However, this doesn't always work. For this to work, it requires three things:- Some form of aggregating peoples' judgements
- Diversity
- Independence
Why is diversity important? Wise crowds need cognitive diversity...
difference in frames of reference, tools used to solve problems,
etc. It simply expands the range of information that is available,
and avoids the hurdles and obstacles that a single individual
may run in to. Diversity helps to even out the blind spots and
biases in a crowd...and the biases and blind spots of "experts"
as well.
The phrase "collective intelligence" is being used extensively
to capture this concept.
Diversity also helps in get around peer pressure. Story is
told of peer pressure in psychological experients, as well
as examples of "groupthink."
Read
the rest of the article.
About the Author:
Christopher Carfi, CEO and co-founder of Cerado, looks at sales,
marketing, and the business experience from the customerīs point
of view. He currently is focused on understanding how emerging
social technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networking
are enabling the creation of new types of customer-driven communities.
He is the author of the Social
Customer Manifesto weblog, and has been occasionally told
that he drives and snowboards just a little too quickly. |
