Comments on: Crowdsourcing crowds

By: Kumar Paramendra Bhagat

Kumar Paramendra Bhagat — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:18:06 +0000

What you have is a great business idea. Time to go get some venture capital, assemble a team and spin it off.

By: Douglas Galbi

Douglas Galbi — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:33:40 +0000

Some people might freak out if others named them. Here in Arlington, vegetable exhibitors at the local fair are now identified only by a number.

By: no one

no one — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:34:10 +0000

Well it depends

For instance I was at the last proper Queen show ever (with Fred alive) at Knebworth, many more people were allowed in than the official head count, I know because I stood at watched the goings on at the gates

So there genuinely were lots more people there than official figures would suggest

At many music events so many folk come in over the barriers, or using various ticket shuffling tricks, that the practical real world audience is much bigger than the official head count

So coming to a conclusion about what the genuine headcount should be is always harder than you would think

By: Dominic Sayers

Dominic Sayers — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:17:05 +0000

Victor Lewis Smith always called The Blind Beggar “the Tardis pub” because of the number of people who claimed to be there the night Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell.

Maybe people might not want to identify themselves publically for this kind of event, but there’s always the possibility of a wiki where you could finger *somebody else* who was there :-)

By: PaulSweeney

PaulSweeney — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:16:38 +0000

Riffing on an idea here, but this is a bit like verification of “x” through weak tie links (a friend of a friend said he was there – 0.1 out of 1.0 total, and build from there etc.). But couldn’t it be used to find people that may have been at a potential crime scene (do you know a friend who might have been in this area at this time). What that might do is drive a witness list that you can then follow up on. mmmm…. anyway, I think the whole area of Attracting The (right) Crowd is a very valid area for business strategy….social action….. government…..

By: Mike Oswalt

Mike Oswalt — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:38:07 +0000

I had a similar thought about Woodstock as well on the anniversary last weekend. My concern was that the estimated 500,000 in actual attendance would blossom to 80,000,000 in “Oh yeah… I was there” attendees. The idea of crowd scrapbooking is a great one. Think of people scanning photos, trying to locate the physical spot they occupied, documenting the journey to get there (and mapping all of that), and other sub-stories of the day. It would be remarkable.

By: JP

JP — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:33:25 +0000

@marklittlewood :-) I suspect the crowds at Dealey Plaza were a little different from those at Woodstock
@paulmauricemartin these things can look boring at the start; when the first cave wall scribblings appeared, I am sure there were similar reactions.
@markearls I am sure they can work together. Even our “unreliable witnesses” will get better by riffing off each other.
@prakashdogra if you solve a problem you will have a customer. if you solve a problem well then you will have many customers. the key is to focus on the problem you’re solving, not exclusively on the business model. It’s the classic Druckerism “People make shoes, not money”.
@satish what the six degrees type studies have shown, repeatedly, is that the groups are *not* separate. they are deeply intertwined if you stand back far enough. Look at Facebook Friend Graphs and what Zuckerberg’s been trying to do there. So when you have a large enough number of groups, the overlaps will help weed out the pretenders from the real folk.

By: Satish

Satish — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:25:13 +0000

The biggest problem here is off group connections. A group is in location where everybody knows each other within the group. But each group is surrounded by other groups where most of the time you don’t know any one from the other groups.

Now how do you verify if that group was actually there or not? And what they say was really what happened?

“Yeah I was there, My friend here can vouch for it. Hey JP remember the amazing dribbling!”

By: Mark AKA Herdmeister

Mark AKA Herdmeister — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:21:23 +0000

JP This is a brilliant idea. I’ve been working on something similar: re-envigorating mass ethnography (i.e. research methodologies that harness our social cognitive skills to report on what others “inside the wave” are doing, as opposed to simply relying on our unreliable witnesses to our own lives…). Would a mix of the two work?

By: Prakash Dogra

Prakash Dogra — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:26:59 +0000

JP, this is a good example of innovate-ideation. Your thoughts are already running wild in my head with a mix of business ideation and propositions…it is possible to do this, keeping personal confidentiality and also make money :)