Comments on: Zoltan indicators: Turning the Mechanical Turk into Zoltan the Fortune Teller

By: Grant McCracken

Grant McCracken — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:32:49 +0000

Patrick, I was thinking of something a little less difficult, a little more automatic, a little less taxing, not so much whats the idea, but is there an idea. But thanks! Grant

By: Patrick Pearce

Patrick Pearce — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:50:22 +0000

This is not unlike the approach adopted by trend spotting companies which use freelance folks from all over the world to find local examples of global trends and then rank them on their prevalence. Having been such a "provider" when I was living in Beijing, I can say that identifying trends takes some serious time investment to understand the nature and scope of each broad trend before being able to clearly spot local examples, so the simplicity of your approach has definite merits. But wouldn't you want your providers to spot and submit innovations as well? This discussion could be facilitated with a practical example of 'X'…

By: Grant McCracken

Grant McCracken — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:36:46 +0000

Steve, you make it sound like the Kauffman continuum is a popularity contest, another way to elites to muster, but it is about people relative tolerance for noise in the signal. And this really is crowdsourcing. We dont have to know who they are. and we dont need to have brand names. Thanks, Grant

By: Steve Portigal

Steve Portigal — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:24:51 +0000

I have this vague dis-ease that some of this might turn into online cool hunting (and I'm sure monitoring Twitter streams for brand mentions might be one necessary yet uninspiring manifestation). Is this revolutionary? Or is it creating a more dense hierarchy, where tastemakers are parsed into Dee Dee Gordon's clients at the top, Dee Dee Gordon (she's just an example, of course) near the top, and a broad swath of Dee Dee Gordon's informants along the bottom. Do we have a hub-and-spoke alternative? I guess the magic/myth of viral is that someone can break through from another place, but it seems like as soon as that happens, the pyramid model returns and tries to replicate or exploit the hubs and spokes to suit their hierarchical (i.e., money-making) model.

Sorry for the cynicism and I'm totally happy to have someone tell me I'm missing the point!!!