Crowdsourcing, Crowd Funding & Now Crowd Wisdom

By now we have all heard of crowdsourcing and crowd funding – the concept of social collaboration on specific projects or networks. But what about taking it a step further and putting a voice to that crowd to actually empower change?

There is a new social media phenomenon emerging called “crowd wisdom.” I think that it could be collectively tracked and connected to form an alert system or call-to-action system that calls attention to when consumers are getting ripped off. Think of the concept of “most popular tweets” or Tweetmeme’s filters but as a vertical application aggregated together into a true social awareness system instead of just a popular news source.

I would love a system that is better than just reviews or a simple product warning, but would rather cause manufacturers to think twice before releasing a product that suits their criteria. A crowd wisdom system would motivate them to instead release it the way the crowd wants the product to function. I think Apple tested the waters on the price point for their new iPad by leaking pricing info ahead of the launch, but even that doesn’t go as far as I would like.

TED speaker and The New Yorker contributor James Surowiecki writes in his book “The Wisdom Of Crowds” about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group.

I like where that thinking is going, but instead of just making decisions, why not use the crowd to rebel against commerce, when the machine tries to rip off consumers? I kind of like the sound of that.

The Lord Of The Rings trilogy is soon to be released on Blu-ray. This is long overdue. When originally release to DVD, the studio first released the theatrical version, then finally the director’s extended version. Fans were upset with the need to purchase two versions because the studio did not release the “best” version first. We all know this is a ploy to make more money. iPad is being released without many features that could have been included in the first version, but that wouldn’t make Apple the same amount of revenue that a multi-stage roll out could.

Fans of the Lord Of The Rings took matters into their own hands and collaborated to drag down the product review for the upcoming Blu-ray release over at Amazon. If you read the first few posts: “We won’t get fooled again…”, “Why do you want to rip us off?” and “You will be disappointed with this theatrical version!!” you will see the power of crowd wisdom in action.

Once again Amazon, in an indirect way, is pioneering a crowd wisdom system that gives power to the consumer. It communicates directly to the manufacturer and tells them to change their tactics or else. I hope Amazon will see this and use it to fight for the consumer. None of us want the “theatrical” versions of any type of product. It is simply waste.

The message from the crowd is that we want the best any product can be right from the start. Mark my words, there will be a social media startup that will leverage this concept into such a powerful pre-launch feedback system that no company will dare release anything without first consulting the wisdom of the crowd.

I hope that day comes soon. Until then, I am waiting for the extended Blu-ray version.