Random Crowds vs Smart Crowds
The flaws and strengths of "crowdsourcing"
I’ve been fascinated with the “wisdom of crowds” for some time now. The rapid adoption of Internet and mobile technologies have led to the appearance of many rating applications which leverage crowds of all sorts to garner some sort of insight. (Yelp, Ebay, Amazon, TripAdvisor etc.)
The history of study related to this topic is fascinating and often misunderstood but I think it’s key to understanding our new future.
Random Crowds
I’m a creature of habit and during the late aughts I spent a lot of time in San Francisco while I was moving www.ariasystems.com to California. I spent most of my nights at the same hotel, running the same route early in the morning and finishing up my day at the same Italian restaurant. The owner and I had gotten into a discussion about the benefits of Yelp for his business. His main complaint was that he featured Northern Italian cuisine that emphasized beef, pork and poultry with not much pasta and at least once a week a tourist would come in and complain via a Yelp review, that he didn’t have any spaghetti on the menu causing his rating to go down and business to suffer. At that moment I realized that the random crowd of “Yelpers” were not qualified to rate this chef. It was an epiphany for me that applied across many applications and industries.
Smart Crowds
Based on the anecdotal observations above, I felt like finding a “smart crowd” to solve specific problems was always better than a random crowd or even the single smartest person. It can enable you to go wide and deep with problems, collecting and verifying data…better data and better data verification. Here is a paper I discovered much later that delves into this issue and helps to prove my observation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264462189_The_Wisdom_of_Select_Crowds
The problem is…how do you recruit and align a diverse “smart” crowd around certain behaviors?
Custom Crowds with Incentives
The question: Can you create a custom, curated “smart” crowd to solve data collection and verification problems? There are a few key challenges: geographical diversity, organizational diversity and lack of incentives. Time-shifting and place-shifting work are pivotal strategies for curating a diverse crowd of smart experts. Time-shifting allows for the asynchronous contribution of expertise, enabling individuals from different time zones to participate without the constraints of real-time engagement. This widens the pool to include experts who may be otherwise engaged during conventional working hours, such as academics or high-level consultants. Place-shifting, on the other hand, leverages remote work technologies to eliminate geographical barriers, making it possible to tap into global talent pools. By combining these two strategies, a platform can curate a highly diverse and specialized crowd, ranging from Silicon Valley technologists to European policy experts and Asian market analysts. This diversity not only enriches the quality of information and insights but also creates a robust, self-reinforcing ecosystem that is more resilient to systemic biases and blind spots.
The integration of blockchain technology and utility tokens can revolutionize the incentive mechanisms within a network effects platform focused on business information. Blockchain's transparent and immutable ledger ensures trust and accountability, making it easier to track contributions and attribute value in a decentralized manner. Utility tokens can serve as the currency for this ecosystem, incentivizing high-quality contributions by offering tangible rewards that can be traded or redeemed. For instance, experts could earn tokens for providing insights, peer-reviewing content, or curating data. These tokens could then be used to access premium resources on the platform or be exchanged for other forms of value. The tokenomics can be designed to encourage long-term engagement, such as vesting schedules or staking mechanisms that reward sustained, high-quality participation. This creates a virtuous cycle: as the platform grows in value, so does the utility and worth of the tokens, which in turn attracts a higher caliber of experts, further enhancing the platform's value proposition. By aligning incentives in this way, blockchain and utility tokens can significantly elevate the quality and diversity of contributions, making the platform more competitive and disruptive in the business information industry.
My Solution
This thought process was what led me to the idea of Trust Exchange. A platform where organizations or individuals could create their own “expert network” to collect and verify mission critical business information. We started building the platform in 2012 then when web3 began to emerge, I saw that it was a natural marriage. Now, I just wish the chasm between idea and adoption wasn’t so wide.
If you’d like to learn more about what we’ve built and continue to improve, you can visit our website here: www.trustexchange.com. The draft white paper describing the token driven platform is here: whitepaper.trustexchange.com
Feedback Please
As we navigate the evolving landscape of business information and collective intelligence, your insights and experiences are invaluable. I invite you to share your thoughts on the role of 'smart crowds' in today's data-driven world. Have you encountered challenges in curating a specialized crowd, or do you have success stories to share about leveraging collective wisdom in your organization? Your feedback not only enriches this discussion but also contributes to the ongoing refinement of Trust Exchange. Please leave your comments below or reach out directly via Trust Exchange's Contact Page.