When I wrote earlier Will our reputation systems be distributed? Probably not for a long time, a number of people noted that reputation systems will be gamed.
Absolutely. The more valuable a system is, the more people will try to game it. If reputation systems influence who people buy from, who they date, who they read, then massive efforts will be made to game the systems.
However the value of a reliable reputation system is such that it is worth doing anything possible to counter-act the gamers, and it is possible. The energy and money devoted to trying to game Google is extraordinary, yet these efforts have limited success.
In the last chapter of my book Living Networks I made a number of predictions for the future of the living networks, including that Information filtering will be an evolutionary battlefield.
While reputation is a slightly different space from information filtering, both are absolutely evolutionary battlefields where each party’s tactics will evolve in response to the others’, all the while creating valuable outcomes for users. Here is the excerpt from Living Networks.
Information filtering will be an evolutionary battlefield
Bats’ use of echolocation to find their prey is one of the marvels of nature. Bats produce high-frequency sounds, and by picking up and distinguishing the immensely quieter echoes off insects in the air, can instantaneously calculate the location of their next meal. The evolution of this extraordinary capability has led to moths evolving in response. The soft outside of their wings and bodies absorbs the bats’ ultrasound. Moths engage in evasive flying stunts when they hear bats squeaking. Some moths have even evolved the ability to produce ultrasound as well, possibly to startle and throw off bats. In turn, bats have developed complex flying behaviors to confuse moths, and occasionally turn off their echolocation to stop the moths jamming their signals.
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Use your imagination! The potential of Annotated Tweets
By Ross DawsonAside from the announcement of Promoted Tweets, Twitter’s advertising platform, the most important thing coming out of Twitter’s Chirp developer’s conference was a hazy pre-announcement of Annotated Tweets.
In a nutshell, developer’s will be able to let users to attach up to (probably) 512bytes of structured metadata to a tweet (plans are to increase this to 2KB), which can be used in one or many ‘annotations’ with additional data. This can only be added at the time of the tweet, or it if is retweeted.
To put this in context, a character can be represented in a byte, so you can add over 3 times as much data as the 140 characters of a tweet, in whatever format you want.
It is very early yet, with estimates of being launch in two months, and many things to be ironed out, not least how people can untangle the plethora of annotation formats that are likely to be launched.
It is completely open what can be done with this. In its note to developers Twitter says: Think big. Blow our minds.
Ideas for what annotations could be used for, adapted from Twitter, Venture Beat, Scobleizer, plus quite a few of our own, include:
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The rise of robot journalists
By Ross DawsonI have an abiding interest in robots and the role they play in our future. I am also a keen observer of where journalism is going. As it happens, the two domains are intersecting.
Robotic journalist conducting interview. Pic source: Singularity Hub, Charlie Catlett
Singularity Hub reports:
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Location-based dating is FINALLY hot, Hot, HOT!
By Ross DawsonSome ideas take a while to come to reality. Urban Signals is a New York-based company whose iPhone app notifies you when compatible singles are nearby and would like to meet. The iPhone app is free to download but requires a monthly subscription after the first month.
While some suggest that this was only a matter of time, this has in fact been happening for at least eight years.
Back in 2002 I wrote about proximity dating in my book Living Networks.
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A few thoughts on Twitter’s ‘Promoted Tweets’
By Ross DawsonJust over 4 years since the first Tweet was sent, Twitter has announced its plan to sell advertising on Twitter, by the name of ‘Promoted Tweets’.
A good interview of Twitter COO Dick Costolo on CNBC gives quite a bit of detail on the plan:
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A visit to Malaysia: perspective on technology, innovation, and growth
By Ross DawsonI recently spent three days in Kuala Lumpur, running a two-day workshop for a client and meeting a number of very interesting people. I hadn’t been to Malaysia for six years, so it was great to get back. I thought it was worth sharing a few top-of-mind impressions and thoughts from my brief time there.
The first impression is how rapidly KL has developed in the last years. The glamorous new airport, wide highways everywhere, and the extraordinary Putrajaya area, which houses the federal government, are testament to the massive investment in infrastructure over the last years.
However traffic in KL remains abominable at rush hour. People sometimes choose to wait a couple of hours before driving home, and expect to get home at the same time anyway.
Pic: CEO and PA of Malaysia Industry-Government Group for High Technology, Ross Dawson, Nik Hasyudeen, with Putrajaya landmarks in the background
I was very fortunate to have Nik Hasyudeen, the former president of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants and recently announced executive chairman of the Audit Oversight Board, as my guide for part of the trip. Nik is a connector extraordinaire, and adds to his broad experience in business strategy a great appetite for innovation.
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Outsourcing journalism – how far can you take it?
By Ross DawsonSeed.com, AOL’s venture in crowdsourced journalism, has just sent out a survey to its contributors, with some very interesting questions, notes Business Insider.
Source: Business Insider
A few interesting thoughts coming out of the issues raised in the survey:
* Seed.com is considering outsourcing fact-checking and copy-editing – given finding the right talent and quality control systems this should be feasible
* Contests and ratings systems could be a significant incentive to contributing, notes New York Observer. This is because aspiring journalists, through this kind of reputation, could more readily move on to more attractive opportunities. In a similar vein TopCoder uses contents to draw in the best developers.
* There could be real value in building communities for aspiring writers, as well as providing training and development. Attracting talent requires more than just providing an outlet.
Seed.com, Demand Media and others are in the vanguard of doing what they can to attract talented contributors who are motivated by things other than money. We are beginning to discover how far we can take outsourced journalism.
There will be two types of people: content creators and non-content creators
By Ross DawsonIn the future there will be two types of people.
Either you will create content to share with the world, or you will not.
Many of us have already made the choice to share content with the world at large. We will be joined by many more.
The advantages of having a visible presence in a world awash with information will create a substantial economic and social difference between content creators and the rest.
Yet some people will not to want to share. Some won’t want to share anything about themselves beyond family and close friends. Others will be concerned about the privacy implications. They will not share of themselves to the world.
However if you choose to be a content-creator, it’s a slippery slope. Once you are sharing your voice online, be it through blogging, Twitter, social networks, videos, or other channels, the demands are intense just to keep it going. It’s fun, it’s rewarding, but it’s a commitment.
When your reputation and personal potential are driven by sharing, you do more. So as I just wrote, there can be spiralling demands from content creation.
If you choose to create content, content creation will be your life.
Managing the spiralling demands of blogging
By Ross DawsonIt’s all about content. That’s the heart of the universe today. Which is why I blog – to have presence in the universe.
But writing a blog is a continuous commitment. You’re always trying to carve out time from seemingly intractably busy-ness, just to keep the blog alive. Blogging is a priority, but it’s always easy to postpone writing down an idea when it arises, and then it never gets done.
Of course, if you’re a professional blogger/ writer, then the demands are truly intense. Columbia Journalism Review writes how Michael Calderone, just leaving Politico to the Yahoo! News Project, wrote over 4,000 posts while at Politico (averaging over 4 posts for every single day of his 2 ½ years there).
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A belated hooray! iPhone will finally get an external keyboard
By Ross DawsonLast year in intense frustration I wrote It is totally INSANE that you cannot use an external keyboard on an iPhone. It is absolutely crazy that I have to carry around other devices to be able to touchtype on the move.
With the launch of the iPad with external keyboard capabilities (and large on-screen keyboard) I was getting worried that they weren’t going to give the iPhone a keyboard in order to differentiate the devices.
Fortunately Steve Jobs has just announced that iPhone OS4, due out in the Northern summer, will include Bluetooth keyboard capabilities. Again, it is totally insane that it has taken this long – the iPhone has always had Bluetooth, it’s just that Apple deliberately crippled the ability to use it for keyboards.
This means I’m likely to continue with iPhone for a little while. The latest Android phones were beginning to look very tempting.
Of course there are some other nice features in OS4, notably multitasking and enhanced camera and video capabilities. But the keyboard is for me the critical one.
Information filtering and reputation will be evolutionary battlefields
By Ross DawsonWhen I wrote earlier Will our reputation systems be distributed? Probably not for a long time, a number of people noted that reputation systems will be gamed.
Absolutely. The more valuable a system is, the more people will try to game it. If reputation systems influence who people buy from, who they date, who they read, then massive efforts will be made to game the systems.
However the value of a reliable reputation system is such that it is worth doing anything possible to counter-act the gamers, and it is possible. The energy and money devoted to trying to game Google is extraordinary, yet these efforts have limited success.
In the last chapter of my book Living Networks I made a number of predictions for the future of the living networks, including that Information filtering will be an evolutionary battlefield.
While reputation is a slightly different space from information filtering, both are absolutely evolutionary battlefields where each party’s tactics will evolve in response to the others’, all the while creating valuable outcomes for users. Here is the excerpt from Living Networks.
Information filtering will be an evolutionary battlefield
Bats’ use of echolocation to find their prey is one of the marvels of nature. Bats produce high-frequency sounds, and by picking up and distinguishing the immensely quieter echoes off insects in the air, can instantaneously calculate the location of their next meal. The evolution of this extraordinary capability has led to moths evolving in response. The soft outside of their wings and bodies absorbs the bats’ ultrasound. Moths engage in evasive flying stunts when they hear bats squeaking. Some moths have even evolved the ability to produce ultrasound as well, possibly to startle and throw off bats. In turn, bats have developed complex flying behaviors to confuse moths, and occasionally turn off their echolocation to stop the moths jamming their signals.
Read more →