The wisdom of the crowd
The internet harnesses the wisdom of the crowd pretty much better than anything else. This morning I found Urbanspoon’s list of top 100 Melbourne restaurants as voted by their users. It’s a pretty good list!
What we need now:
- a meta-list: i.e. a site which ranks the rankings. How do I know that Urbanspoon is the best ranking? (I suppose this could always be Google.)
- more open APIs. Open APIs may seem like a strategic no-no but actually they’re a big yes: they’re a signal about the value and quality of your data. More importantly, they amplify your signal too. Everytime someone creates a Twitter app, there’s the Twitter brand in play again. (I want Urbanspoon to have an open API so someone can write a trending application for it. Their implementation on this isn’t enough for me!)
