I have always found great interest in the idea of crowd sourcing. When individuals come up with an idea, it could be good or it could be bad. However, if multiple people come up with the same idea and it is heard over and over again, most likely, there is something there.
There is a book called “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki. (1) The book starts with a story of a crowd at a fair. They are asked to guess the weight of an ox. The individual’s guesses are all over the place, but the average weight based on the individual’s guesses was closer to the ox's true-butchered weight than the estimates of the separate guesses made by cattle experts.
Having access to individual’s social media data is like striking gold. With access to data mining findings, one could probably make a fortune just by analyzing peoples posts, and information. If you were to see interest in the same products over and over again, it is not unreasonable to assume that it’s a great product, and a company worth investing in. This isn’t the best example but take Google +. I guarantee there are a good amount of people that have heard of the new Google + product because some of their facebook friends are asking for an Invite. Once they get the invite they talk even more about it…. The product is not even close to being out of beta and they keep doubling in size. On June 24th Google’s stock was at $475ish on July 6th, it was at $545ish. Thank you Google + and thank you crowd sourcing.
If anyone wants to get a peak at their new product, just let me know and I’ll send you the much requested invite.
1. The Wisdom of Crowds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
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