Harnessing the Collective

I've had the pleasure to talk with lots of interesting, smart folks recently -- and a theme that's emerging from these conversations is the Net's increasing power to harness the collective..

We see this vividly right now in the political landscape, with Howard Dean's success using the Net to raise money and catalyze volunteer support. We also see this in the proliferation of easy-to-use tools for building and maintaining relationships. Today's social networks are essentially software frameworks where the users create ALL the content and virally market the product. More and more online discussions are using Slashdot-derived self-moderating systems, which harness the collective editorial behaviors of the readership. And then there's Google, who has this idea embedded in it's DNA. Google Search harnesses the collective interest of people online (as expressed through links) and Google News gives us a real-time picture of which stories are attracting attention online.

Today, just for fun, I googled this phrase. The results were sprinkled with terms like 'smart organizations,' 'learning communities' and 'hi-performance teams.' It's exciting to see the basic principles of system dynamics and knowledge-sharing becoming more mainstream and accepted -- in our software systems, poitical processes, and company cultures. That's a sure sign of how much the Net is infiltrating everyday life.

Comments

[dave davison]

Advertisers seeking to influence google's page ranking have been successful at making Google the world's largest advertising agency - where ranking and side-bar ads bring the advertiser's links to the top of the page rank and make Google a whole lot of money.

what's in Google's DNA is a formula for monetizing their enormous database of user search requests and clickthroughs - Blogger and Orcut are likely to be monetized in the same way. Having a persistent, authentic identity is important to participants in online social networks but the user's information should be under his or her personal control, and not used for commercial purposes by the Social Network provider without the user's express permission.