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What is Collective Wisdom? What Do You Think?

Published by Rodney November 26th, 2006 in News, Business, Rodney Rumford, user feedback. Tags: blog, business, business blog, business titles, collective wisdom, mojopages, rodney rumford, social network, user feedback, web design, web2.0, web20, wisdom of crowds.

Wisdom of the Crowds I have thought for several years about collective wisdom and how collective wisdom could be leveraged online with cool technology. Collective Wisdom is sometimes also called “the wisdom of crowds“. Basically it means that a group of people collectively are more knowledgeable about a specific topic or subject matter and the net result is much better than 1 so called “expert” opinion. A great example of collective wisdom is Wikipedia. There is also a great book that discusses The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.
So you might be asking yourself…what does this have to do with MojoPages? We believe that the most knowledgeable people in any local area about how a business conducts itself is that businesses clients (consumers). This means that your input to MojoPages in the form of reviews, ratings, insights, comments, etc., about local businesses will ultimately provide the best reference point anywhere for you to make a decision about a particular business and if you want to do business with them.

So we are taking the “Collective Wisdom” of local consumers online and sharing it with other consumers so that everyone wins. An online social network that leverages collective consumer experience is good for all participants of that social network. If only MojoPages had existed 2 years ago when we remodeled our entire house it could have saved me the pain of dealing with a totally inept flooring contractor that installed our new Pergo floors. He would have been exposed as inept on MojoPages and I would not have had to ever deal with him and could have chosen a highly rated contractor instead. (For the record I had this clown out to repair the floors no less than 4 times over 4 months).

So what we are building (and what keeps me awake at night) is a way for our users to easily engage in this concept and have a good experience in the process. Collective Wisdom is a good thing in my honest opinion. What do you think?

Rodney Rumford

blog, business, business blog, business titles, collective wisdom, mojopages, rodney rumford, social network, user feedback, web design, web2.0, web20, wisdom of crowds

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9 Responses to “What is Collective Wisdom? What Do You Think?”

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1 CSamarin Nov 27th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

You guys are definitely on to something…but how do you plan to differentiate yourselves from similar sites already up and running like Yelp.com or JudysBook.com?
2 Jon Carder Nov 27th, 2006 at 11:10 pm

Great question CSamarin,
Here’s the quick answer. We will have all the features these sites have as well as about 10 unique features that combine to make the experience much more efficient, fun and helpful. Then on top of these ten things we have two very special differentiators that are levels above the competition. Sort of like Google was to Yahoo, MySpace was to Friendster and YouTube was to Google Video. These features promise not to disappoint. We are however not releasing the details of these features because we’re currently applying for patents. We most likely won’t release details until we launch our beta release. We wouldn’t want to give the competition any time to catch up. Bottom line is the local search market is huge and growing and we feel there is a lot of room for improvement. We’re passionate about making the best local search company and we’re 100% committed to this goal. At the end of the day all that will matter is if you and the other 200 million US internet users find MojoPages to be the best local search. We hope you do!
3 Wesley Long Nov 28th, 2006 at 12:07 am

I agree, you guys are on to something. I tried to send you an email Jon with comments and suggestions but it got bounced back twice. Do you have another email address I could send to?
4 Rodney Rumford Nov 28th, 2006 at 2:08 am

Wesley,
Thanks for the comments… we think we are onto something as well. we never sleep as you can see by this post at 1am. I will privately send you an email addy.
5 Pac Nov 28th, 2006 at 7:39 pm

Hey, I like http://www.yelp.com
Jon said that Mojo will have all those features plus 10 more. WOW! Can’t wait for the launch. When is the exact date, btw?
6 Jon Carder Nov 29th, 2006 at 2:00 am

Well Alpha’s out now so you can sign up on mojopages.com. The beta will most likely be ready in January or February at the latest. Thanks for the support, we hope to WOW the socks off you once you see all that MojoPages has to offer.
7 Scotty Dec 5th, 2006 at 11:19 pm

Collective wisdom is an extremely useful tool as long as it has the statistical foundation to provide useful results. For example, consumer reviews can provide immediate information on vendor products and services, but the information may be skewed by consumer expectations and prejudices. In order to have meaningful information on products and services, reviews need to be extensive enough to provide ideally random review samples across the general population. Also, there are tools that can effectively “mine”/rank/categorize reviews and/or responses so that vendor products and services can be presented in the most realistic/truthful fashion. Anyway, please forgive my verbosity. I just find the topic fascinating.
8 Tom Dec 7th, 2006 at 10:26 am

Hi Rodney, Jon, and everyone. The wisdom of crowds concept is really picking up steam because it’s TRUE — together we are smarter. There’s another book out this week, “Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message,” by Church of the Customer bloggers Ben and Jackie. From the excerpts it seems totally relevant to what you’re doing with MojoPages. The new reality is that if you’re in business, you HAVE TO be in conversation with your customers (even if it’s only the most-active 1 percent) because they are now your marketing team. Mojo enables that dynamic! You guys have left the beach and paddled out, positioned your board perfectly, and now you’re about to catch one of the biggest waves of the new century… enjoy the ride!

More about the book here: http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/

And at Guy Kawaski’s blog here: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/12/ten_questions_w.html
9 Rodney Dec 7th, 2006 at 11:08 am

Tom,
Thanks for the great links to the new book and to Guy Kawasaki’s blog post with his questions of the authors of “Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message”. This looks like a great read and I am going to Amazon to purchase as soon as I finish this post.

The book is very relevant to what we are building at MojoPages.com I have had the conversation with all the team members several times about the 1% rule and we all “get it” and are tuned in. That is going to be a very critical part of our focus and hopefully a linchpin to our success. “People are the message… and MojoPages is all about the people participating”. This is the sort of stuff that gets me charged up and reinforces my belief in what we are doing… this is going to be a wild ride.

The fact that you participated here made me even wiser… Participation and the wisdom of the crowds in action.

Thanks,
Rodney