Thursday, August 17

Business need: Digg for Consumer Electronics

I'm on the prowl for new gadgets (smart-phone, wide-screen TV, games console), and I think a market like Digg for consumer electronics would help prune the search space.
With the number and combination of brands, specs, makers, designs, features, personal preferences and whatnot involved, such an application would tap into the wisdom of crowds and transform many diverse opinions into a single collective judgement.
This is the central thesis of the Wisdom of Crowds:

"With most things, the average is mediocrity. With decision making, it's often
excellence. We've been programmed to be collectively smart
".


I hope this is what Jay Adelson [Digg's current CEO] means when he says:
"The best I can tell you is Digg as a concept can be applied to other content aside from news. Just wait and see what we’re going to apply it to."


In fact, Amazon is also in a good place to experiment with crowdsorting their results pages (and when you're at it Amazon, please let us also do column sorting so that we don't need to navigate through pages of results that we don't care about to find what we want).


[Update]:
Product Clash's clash and compare feature almost nails it:
"Now you can clash and compare your best consumer products for low price offers.
Product Clash features cheap cameras, cheap cell phones, cheap computers, cool
gadgets, cheap home entertainment, cheap peripherals and portable media
comparison clashes! Clashing is fun for movies, music, games and DVDs."



Useful Links:
Venture Voice Show #37 - Jay Adelson of Digg
The Wisdom of Crowds
Independent Individuals and Wise Crowds
The Observer: Here's Hoping This Group-Think Effort Is Full Of Wisdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

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