What do you think of crowd sourcing?
Is it effective?
Can we trust the information?
Take for instance TripAdvisor, the largest travel community in the world - with more than 32 million members, and over 100 million reviews. Do you trust the information you´re being given and have you considered that people have different assumptions of things?
Does "The wisdom of the crowd" the world a better place? Is this a way to provide new opportunities to contribute, share and let one's voice be heard? Is it so that the new markets opening up provide opportunities for creativity, innovation and new ideas? Or should we listen to critics who say that this is just another way for the big global companies to leverage the crowd, giving them free access to the new information so that you get the most "customized" advertising and cheapest possible labor? Developments in this field are constantly changing, and you can probably see that both directions in evidence. But there is a tendency for increasing commercialization of the various services, so we'll just hope that community spirit will survive and that creativity will find new ways and new innovative ways to apply the principles of crowdsourcing on.
I think that it is a good way for companies to get free advertising from good reviews, or to show how they change once they receive a negative review. As far as consumers, I think that it serves as a way for us to hear real comments - positive and negative - from real users as opposed to paid actors only saying what they want us to hear.
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