The Next Web

Wisia: hundred folks is a crowd, so there’s your wisdom

Written on July 16, 2008 – 11:39 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

California-based Wisia offers a simple way to use the wisdom of crowds. Just ask a question, the Wisia community will give you some answers. That’s basically all there is to it. So let’s dig a little deeper in this process, since we all have questions torturing our minds, right?

Three phases to come to an answer

Ok, so you’re thinking about asking that girl/boy out, what’s the best way to do that? Sounds like a simple question, but the question template of Wisia can turn asking it into a real challenge. This is the best form I could come up with, suggestions are welcome.

After asking the question, the community gets the opportunity to give some suggestions for the definite answer. Users only have to speak up and add some links to documents that prove their point. This is phase one.

Phase two is easier, just voting for what you consider to be the best answer. After 99 other people did the same, a ranking of the answers appears. That’s phase three. Now it’s up to the one who asked the question. Will he or she take the most popular answer for granted?

For the bright side of life

As you probably expected by the whole question asking-process, Wisia is suitable for the lighter questions of life. Some examples of running topics:

• The hottest men that every woman should fantasize about!
• Celebrities that should take classes on how to contribute to society.
• What beer should become my next favorite?

In short, Wisia is fun to play around with, or to find out what the public opinion about a certain matter is. And the good news is you can do that too. Dahwun Kim from Wisia was so nice to offer The Next Web 50 private beta invites. So browse to the sign-up page and type in thenextweb. Good luck rallying the crowd.

I hope you like that post!

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