March 07, 2008
Digital Curators
In a compelling post by Steve Rubel, he argues that digital curators are the future of online content. With never-ending information flow and entertainment overload, demand will never scale to match the supply of content. Curators are selfless experts that guide us to the most relevant information unlike memetrackers and social news sites like Digg. Curators are NOT editors according to Rubel because "the notion of editor implies that space is finite. Online it's not. Curators don't need to necessarily be trained in cutting, but in knowing where and how to unearth those special high-quality "finds" and to make them presentable." How do we identify the best "curators" on sites like del.icio.us and what behavioral patterns or characteristics do they share?
Posted by Enrique at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2008
From Freerice to Mobile Mechanical Turks for Peace
Can we provide the right incentives for people to Subvert and Profit for things that increase positive net benefit like possibly an anonymous witness program to help solve problems such as too many unsolved murders right here in East Palo Alto.
How can we design more applications like FreeRice that incorporate the model of the Mechanical Turk to provide human intelligence tasks like analyzing the geospatial footage of Bhutto's recent assassination (people did it for Steve Fosset and Microsoft's James Grey). Lots of authentication and security issues but the take home is mass interpersonal persuasion of people in the wired world to do "good" things with their collective knowledge and providing meaningful opportunities for the developing part-time internet workforce. Just imagine what we could do with a mobile Turker Nation of crowd sourcing and more applications like Plusmo.
--Enrique Allen
Posted by Enrique at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2008
Mass Communication Subversion
While ad revenue continues to drive many web 2.0 companies, Subvert and Profit is not the first attempt to employ "crowd hacking" techniques to let people pay to get their content on Digg, Stumble Upon and more recently YouTube. Without trying to spin their business into something socially acceptable, advertisers pay 9,000 users internationally to pollute big social sites and get traffic. The rate for Diggs and Stumbles runs at $2 a vote and users receive $1 for their contribution. You can also earn 20% of the earnings of any friends you refer, and 10% of the cost of advertisements from any advertisers you refer. The service is shrouded in promises of secrecy for their clients and difficult to measure how it actually contributes to the success of content. Despite all the ethical questions, envision a similar model for subversion that may increase positive net benefit for our society like creating incentives for citizens to participate in our democratic process.
Posted by Enrique at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2007
10 web crediblity guidelines now in German
Our lab's 10 guidelines for creating credible websites have been translated into German.
* http://meiert.com/de/publications/translations/stanford.edu/guidelines/
* http://nitzsche.info/de.pub-7-uebersetzung-credibility-richtlinien.php
Posted by BJ Fogg at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2006
Our web credibility work praised for vagueness
In the current issue of ACM's Interactions, IBM's Fred Sampson writes two pages about how metrics can get in the way of real insight.
(This is Fred Sampson, who works with IBM, STC, and DUX.)
While our Stanford lab focuses a lot on measurements, Fred praises part of our work where we don't go mega-quantitative. In one large (quantitative) study, we found that people mostly evaluated the credibility of web sites based on the "design look." We gave examples of this concept, but we didn't go much farther on this point. After we published that research many people have asked us to break "design look" into parts they can study and manipulate. Now, to my surprise, Fred takes the contrary stance: "Please don't insult me further by trying to quantify looking good."
If you know my work, you know I love categorizing and analyzing. I thrive on breaking complex ideas into their simplest parts. However, in this particular case, I agree with Fred. But I agree for reasons that may surprise you. The web cred study he cites explores over 40 common-sense concepts. If we had quantified each one, we would have either (a) done a terrible job or (b) never completed the study. Even operationalizing the concept of "design look" is a big task, probably about the size of a dissertation to get a preliminary answer (any takers?)
Here's an excerpt from the Fred Sampson's full article:
I am gratified to see that Stanford researcher B.J. Fogg and colleagues, when evaluating the credibility of Web sites, count user responses but do not try to quantify aspects such as "design look" or "information focus." Credible Web sites look good, just as we know that tall, attractive people are somehow seen as more credible than the rest of us. See, for instance, Malcolm Gladwell on the predominance of tall CEOs, and the presidential good-looks (and dismal performance) of President Warren Harding. But please don’t insult me further by trying to quantify looking good; we all know that there are no tens.
-- BJ Fogg
Posted by BJ Fogg at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)