02 Week

As a follow on to last week's blog on crowd sourcing, I am going to reflect on how companies can go about using the data from crowd sourcing. I will also discuss the new paradigm of marketing created by the need for customers to express their opinions and be catered to on their terms.

First let us look at what we can do with crowd sourcing. In the 45 mins video by Alma Whitten on 'Lessons from Googles Approach to Internet Security, Privacy and Encryption' we learned how Google is harnessing the power of crowd sourcing to provide better results for searches. Prior to watching this video, I was naive enough to think that Google only has a special algorithm to rank the search results based on links to the pages. I was impressed to find out that there is more to it than just ranking based on linked paged. The ranking based on linked pages is only the first step, Google is also gathering and tracking how the user interact with its search results to create a story which it then uses to further refine its' results. The aggregation of millions of search result stories helps Google refine its' search accuracy while preventing deceptive websites "the bad guys" from manipulating its' algorithms. Second, Google is using its' vast knowledge of searches to combine with other sources of information to provide faster/real time modeling of trends. They have partnered with the CDC to see show how flu is spreading across the US in real time. Once again Google is using anonymous information provided by the crowds to create macro patterns that help the crowds and in this case the CDC to help monitor and control the spread of a virus. Google also uses the search data that the users enter to create stories to help with spelling correction and translation. Once again the stories created by Google search users and interpreted by Google on how the crowds behave is used to help the crowds achieve the results they desire.

In addition to using the crowd sourced data generated by searches through its' search engine, Google is at the forefront on allowing the user community to try out its' products and gain feedback to make it better. A recent example of this effort is Google Glass. Google released, Google Glass as a beta version to test the market. On its' Google Glass website it monitored how the customers were responding to the product and then it decided to go into full production with the device. Google also bought YouTube a few years ago. Once again, it anticipated that video production was becoming easier through new technology and it understood the desire of people to create and post their own videos. Google also realized that the trend to consume video entertainment was changing as well, from traditionally produced professional TV shows to videos created by the people, for the people, of the people.. the democratization of video production and consumption. A new wave of marketing was emerging which had swung from broad segment based marketing to very focused marketing and now to group based marketing. Google through its' platforms for blooging, youtube, gmail and search has been very effective en-chasing from this new trend in marketing.

Marketing today is not about controling the message. The best marketing strategies involve the customers in a conversation about the products and services. This marketing requires companies to trust their offerings and forces them to listen to their customers. Companies that make a half attempt at it or try to rig the results on the customer feedback get punishe, and the brand value takes a hit as evidenced by Ford's experiment with the "fordboldmoves.com." Technology has enabled the crowd to express their opinion and it cannot be stopped. If the crowd perceives manipulation, it reacts to further show it strength of opinion as evidenced with Diggs.com removal of the HD DVD encryption key. Successful companies have relinquished control of the message and have joined the wave instead of fighting it. These companies have built trust and are rewarded by customer loyalty. Further because of their openness to customer feedback they have been able to evolve their products and services to the exact specifications of the customer. As this digital marketing revolution proceeds, customers will continue to demand, at an increasing rate, exactly what they want, how they want it and when they want it. Marketing is a good thing for when the customer gets what he/she wants, when he/she wants it, without having to go searching for it.

Crowdsourcing has a few draws back as well. As Google found out, it can be rigged. Also, there is a tendency of group think that can have undesired outcomes. As the research presented in the "Star Search" podcast, it seems like there was tendency for customers to give extremely positive reviews for the most mundane items. Perhaps because of the tendency for people to feel that they are experts and that their decision is generally right. An interesting experiment was conducted by yours truly a few years ago. I had noticed a retail store with 2 exit/entry doors right next to each other. I had also noticed that the customers were only using one of the doors and almost no one used the other door. This was further perplexing because the number of people entering and leaving the store during a Sale was so high that people had to wait in line to leave the store. For a moment I thought, perhaps like others, that the other door was locked and I waited in line to exit the door. After a brief moment I realized the stupidity of this wait and walked to the other door and opened it and walked out. Once I did that I noticed that more and more people realized this and started to use the other door as well until there was an even distribution of people using both doors. In an other experiment, I decided to stand on a busy street for a few minutes staring at the top of a building with a perplexed look. I was not really staring at anything in particular, I was just wondering if I could get a following of people who would stand next to me and stare at nothing to try to figure out what I was doing. My experiment worked, within 5 minutes I had approximately 45-50 people standing next to me staring into nothing at a building the more a crowd formed the more people got interested in the crowd. I left the crowd to stand in the back and observe the phenomenon. It took another 10 minutes for the crowd to realize that there was really nothing and no one really knew why they were staring at the top of the building. People where just doing what others were doing. Both these experiments tell me that while crowdsourcing is the future and is powerful tool, it can go awry. It can provide meaningless information and can be rigged. Thankfully more often than not, crowdsourcing does provide information that is relevant and the best answer to a problem.

I find this subject very intriguing and I wonder what other experiments we can do that can better help us tweak the results of crowdsourcing so that incorrect or irrelevant information from the crowds can be detected and discarded. I am sure we will find an answer to this problem (if it is not already found) in the very near term, as the new wave of marketing, and innovation relies so heavily on this.