In regards to wikipedia, I’ve heard everything that it’s unreliable to it’s more accurate than the encyclopedia britanica. Classes like this one encourage its use, other’s don’t even allow it as a source. The main controversy is whether or not you can trust its information. This article discusses measures that are being considered that would likely make the website more accurate, but possibly deter user contributions.
I thought this article out of the Wall Street Journal was interesting. The article is discussing Yahoo’s success with its new Ad-Ranking Tool. According to the article, “web surfers are clicking on Yahoo Inc. search-related advertisements with increasing frequency following the introduction of a new ad-ranking system.” This new system “determines ad placement based on an assessment of quality that includes the ad’s click-through rates and other factors as well as its bid price, rather than bid price alone.” This technique has been so successful that independent research has shown consumers are more often clicking on Yahoo ads instead of the “natural” results of their search. According to a company spokesperson, the system, called Panama, is still in its early stages and more tweaking needs to be done. Its technique for filtering advertisements is very similar to the method used by Google.
I thought it was interesting to read something like this and not have it pertain exclusively to Google.
This article from clickz.com focuses on the importance of word-of-mouth in promoting your product. Point is, people are much more likely to trust someone they know regarding a product than a biased advertisement. To take that a step further, hearing any kind of product feedback from someone you may or may not know goes much further than an advertisement, in my opinion. For example, I’ll go to cnet.com to read reviews on technology products before buying them. Most of the time, I’ll skip over the editor’s review and just read the user reviews. Sometimes this means sorting through reviews that are poorly done or were clearly biased one way, but it’s amazing how many people there are that like to provide you with as much useful information as possible. I guess that’s what makes wikipedia so successful.
And in response to this article: why don’t we all just go get under the sheets, and sob?
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