The Social Path

10 examples of how crowdsourcing is changing the world.

The mind-bendingly awesome podcast RadioLab once told the story of a 1906 country fair at which attendees were invited to guess the weight of a large ox. Hoping for a cash prize, about 800 people made guesses, though no one got it right.

Afterward, a statistician analyzed the written guesses and discovered something shocking: the average of all the guesses was a mere one pound away from the exact weight of the ox.

The moral? Sometimes a crowd can be smarter than any one of its members, even when they're not actually working together. This is just one of the many, many things that fascinates me about crowdsourcing, the idea of taking almost any task and farming it out to the masses.

Today I wanted to highlight a few clever uses of crowdsourcing, just to show how it's quickly changing almost every aspect of online commerce, research and even human interaction.

The list begins, in no certain order, after the jump.

Social media remembrances for Memorial Day.

At the end of each week, Luckie's Whitney Mitchell brings us The Social Pathology Report, a recap of noteworthy occurrences in the world of social media.

I know everyone's jetting out to their respective lakehouses, vacations or graduation ceremony after-parties. But alas, I am here to bring you some interesting linkage that just might be the best thing you read... on Tuesday morning.

• A company named Biz360 claimed it could use social analytics to predict Danny Gokey as the winner of this season's American Idol. How'd that work out for 'em? [Sys-Con]
• A smart phone app called "Copious Inc" allows you to locally pinpoint mobile coupons for stores/restaurants. Too bad it's only available in Lafayette, Indiana. Weird. [Mashable]
• UH OH: Switched helps you find out if your common online habits may be illegal. Behaviors include: "dissing people", insider tweets and surfing for drugs. In no particular order... [Switched]
• His Holiness The Pope gets in on the iPhone & Facebook action. Now we can all boringly superpoke him. [ReadWriteWeb]
• Want to sound like you're hard at work on some super-important project, but really just play some keyboard quiz full of Office Space quotes? You're welcome. [Lemondrop]
• Ever wanted to put Youtube sensational and British songbird Susan Boyle into a room with no doors and watch the magic happen? Me either. But those waiting in anticipation of Sims 3 will get a teaser of that in the franchise's newest promo. [Kotaku]

As always, if you have any tips or links worth mentioning, send me some social aggregation fodder via the e-mail or on the Twitters.
 

Whitney Sides Mitchell is an intern social media planner for Luckie & Co., founder of the local-music blog BHAM.FM and a music blogger for AL.com. Her Social Pathology Report appears here each Friday.

This week's photo credit: rmaxwell/Flickr

What 'Psycho Killer' can teach us about social media.

I've always thought of the Talking Heads' David Byrne as being ahead of his time, but I admit I might be pushing it a bit by applying his lyrics to social media.

Still, I've been noticing several corporate roadblocks lately, and I feel like there are some good lessons buried in Byrne's 1977 classic, "Psycho Killer." 

Here's the verse that's been stuck in my head. You know you know it:

You start a conversation, you can't even finish it.
You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything.
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Say something once, why say it again?

Let's break it down line by line — and let the overthinking commence! — after the jump.

7 great iPhone travel apps (that aren't Urban Spoon).

With the recent release of The 2009 Luckie Fifty, my agency's compilation of the best travel sites on the Web, I wanted to dedicate a little time to an area we don't (yet) include in the roster: iPhone apps.

The iPhone has become an invaluable tool for travelers, especially thanks to the ingenuity of application developers. Here are just a few of the many travel apps that can help make travel just a bit less taxing:

FlightTrack Pro
What it does: Serves as a "personal air travel assistant," tracking your itineraries and keeping you updated on any changes. Lets you monitor flights, delays, gates, baggage carousels, etc. — and sync your flight plan with the social network TripIt.com.
What it costs: $9.99 (or $4.99 for the non-pro version, which includes most everything except the TripIt sync.)
What reviewers say: Average rating of 3.5 stars. Repeat users generally rank the app highly and say the TripIt sync is worth the extra few bucks.

Yelp
What it does: Helps you find reviews and directions for restaurants, hotels or almost any other business nearby. The GPS-based search has made this an invaluable tool on any trip of mine.
What it costs: Free.
What reviewers say: Average rating of 3 stars. The big beef is that you can't actually post reviews from your phone, which I admit would be nice. However, last month, the service added a "Quick Tips" option that lets you post mini-reviews of sorts. That might appease the mob a bit.

Google Mobile
What it does: This is the app that should have come with the iPhone. Lets you say your search terms right into the phone. Click on a business address, and you'll get directions loaded into your map. Click on a phone number, and you can call it.
What it costs: Free
What reviewers say: Average rating 3.5 stars. Most complaints seem based on the voice recognition, which I've found to be almost always accurate, though I have no real accent to speak of.

Lonely Planet Audio Phrasebooks
What it does: Sold by language, each phrasebook includes about $600 spoken and phonetically written phrases, saving you the hassle (and embarrassment) of carrying around a dictionary.
What it costs: $9.99 per language, with 10 languages available so far, including Cantonese, Czech and Turkish.
What reviewers say:
Average rating of 3.5 stars. Most reviewers generally feel the app works well but that the price point is too steep for what you get.

Cheap Gas
What it does: Finds the cheapest gas in your area.
What it costs: Free.
What reviewers say: Average rating 2.5 stars. Prices can be a bit out of date, and a lot of stations simply aren't listed, but it's definitely better than just stopping somewhere randomly.

Wi-Fi Finder
What it does: Finds the nearest Wi-Fi hotspots (free or paid) near you. Finding wireless access in new cities can be a lot harder than you might think, so there's definitely a value here.
What it costs: Free
What reviewers say: Average rating 2.5 stars. iPod Touch users don't seem to like it, because they have to be ON a wireless network to use this site, which kinda defeats the purpose. But iPhone users are all around quite happy with it.

Sit or Squat
 What it does: Lets you browse reviews of toilets located nearby.
What it costs: Free
What reviewers say: Average rating 2.5 stars. Most critics complain about the app not having enough toilets on record, but the developers count on users to supply the data. So next time you end up in a public restroom, be sure to do your duty.

I know a lot of you are veteran travelers, so please be sure to share your suggestions in the comments. Oh, and in case you're wondering why I omitted the widely beloved Urban Spoon app, I just find it to be more of a toy than a truly useful tool. That said, it's the first app I show to iPhone newbies, who just love shakin' that thing.

Weekly social media wrapup: Mob Mentality edition.

Another week over, another installment of The Social Pathology Report from Luckie's intrepid Whitney Mitchell:

While trying to stay on top of news this week, I kept getting distracted by all the people being "up in arms" about certain topics. Some were lobbying for change, while some were just "mad as hell" and "not gonna take it anymore". Either way, I hope those guys found a nice place under a shade tree and a cold, refreshing glass of Riesling because it was drama week with a capital D in Internet land.

• "THE REPLIES KERFUFFLE": Twitter sparked a random riot by eliminating a little-used feature that let you see all your friends' posts that were in reply to people you don't know. (I know, it's hard to even explain, but some people thought it helped them find new friends.) This vocal minority flooded the Web with demands that Twitter bring back the old system, but to no avail. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone put it thusly: "For the 3% who wanted to see replies to people they don't follow, we cannot turn this setting back on in its original form for technical reasons and we won't rebuild it exactly the same for product design reasons." OH SNAP! [blog.twitter.com]
• Google FAIL!: 14% of Google users worldwide couldn't access parts of Google-affiliated sites this past Thursday morning. Based on the noise in my personal Twitter feed, however, the outage actually affected 117% of the Web-browsing community. Here's what ABC News dug up about the problem, and as usual, Asia was to blame. [ABC NEWS]
• SORE SUBJECT CITY: Facebook WILL allow thousand of users who were members of disbanded Holocaust-denial groups to remain on the popular social network. Thousands? Wow... painful to believe. [SFGate.com]
• TWIBES: As if my aunt bogarting the computer to update her "Tweetster" weren't enough, you can now join a "Twibe" (Yes, they're serious) for other folks on Twitter with common interests. [Twibes.com}
• PO-HATE-TOES: Green bloggers came after Lay's with torches and pitchforks for its new "local potatoes" marketing initiative. [GreenBiz]
  
• FREE THE HOPS: Alabama-based grassroots movement Free The Hops lobbied on behalf of craft brewers (and beer lovers alike) to pass a bill that would allow for the purchase of beer with a higher than 6% alcohol ratio. SUCCESS! Now Free the Hops is using Twitter and its blog to drive e-mails to Alabama Governer Bob Riley, who must decide whether to sign the bill into law. [Free The Hops]

As always, if you have any tips or links worth mentioning, send me some social aggregation fodder via the e-mail or on the Twitters.
 

Whitney Sides Mitchell is an intern social media planner for Luckie & Co., founder of the local-music blog BHAM.FM and a music blogger for AL.com. Her Social Pathology Report appears here each Friday.

This week's photo credit: nothing/Flickr

The year's top travel sites: Check out the 2009 Luckie Fifty

We live in a time when Americans simply can't afford to risk a bad vacation

Far fewer Americans are planning leisure trips this summer than in years past. And those who are vacationing are being tremendously careful to plan and budget their journeys more doggedly than ever before.

To help travelers and marketers alike keep tabs on the most effective tools out there, I'm excited to introduce the 2009 Luckie Fifty. This is the second year my colleague David Stutts, Luckie & Company's director of brand planning, has compiled a list of the most useful, innovative and fun travel sites on the Web.

Click here to download the full PDF of The Luckie Fifty.

And don't miss this handy one-sheeter, which you can print out and pin on your office wall next to that picture of a Saint Martin cabana.

There's just a ton of great stuff in the report, so I won't inundate you with all of it here. But after the jump, you'll find David Stutts' summary of 10  social networks that are redefining how travelers connect and share.

Ask a lawyer: Can user comments land a blogger in court?

I've been writing about blog comments for a few days now, thanks to great insights from Adweek Digital Editor Brian Morrissey and social media consultant Mack Collier. But for a slight change of pace, I wanted to look at the liability and legal issues of blog comments.

For this, I turned to Michael McSunas, a veteran attorney in the field of advertising and marketing law. He also happens to be the legal counsel for one of our clients, McKee Foods (parent company of Little Debbie), and an all-around great guy.

(Oh, and just to sell you on his street cred, Michael was the legal coordinator for those Nationwide ads featuring MC Hammer and Kevin Federline. He even negotiated the rights to the ringtones of Federline's "Rollin' VIP" song, which Michael admits was not a tremendously popular download.)

After the jump, you can get all lawyered up with Michael's feedback on issues like:

• Are businesses liable for comments on their blogs?
• Does moderation really shield you from legal trouble?
• Should a blog have a terms of use policy?

When is it kosher to delete a nasty blog comment?

If there's one thing that seems to terrify even the toughest, most iron-willed executives in corporate America, it's the idea of opening themselves to online criticism.

Personally, I think this is because social media is an ultimate equalizer, one that is finally erasing the gulf between corporations and customers. And let's face it, most executives have surrounded themselves with people who are paid to be loyal, so unfiltered criticism is far from being a standard aspect of daily life.

As part of my brief series of posts about blog comments, I wanted to pick the brain of Mack Collier, a social media consultant who specializes in corporate blogging. I turned to Mack because I think he balances the open-dialogue dreams of the social Web with the practicality of the business world.

Check out my quick Q&A with Mack after the jump.

Is your cute new Facebook friend actually a repo man?

Another week's end means another installment of The Social Pathology Report, Whitney Mitchell's weekly wrap-up of buzzworthy bits from the world of social media.

It's May 9th. I thought I'd just put that out there, since 2010 is a weird year for me to comprehend and we're nearly halfway there. This Alabama warm weather's getting to me.

Enough with my sudden-onset nostalgia and on to what caught my eye Web-wise this week:

• Hundreds of Facebook users got a little treat recently when they discovered a cute, Aussie blonde they'd "friended" was actually a collection agency out to retrieve information over past debts. That's got to burn. [Consumerist]
• It's not often that I get to post about my long lost friend, Last.fm. It's a streaming music service that collects data on what you listen to on and off of it's site via a service called scrobbling. This week, Mashable broke down the site's new feature, "visual radio". Anyone else reminded of old-school Windows Media Player? Just me, I guess. [Mashable]
• News that MySears.com and MyKmart.com will attempt to engage customers through their own social networks reminded MediaPost of the dire situation Wal-Mart got itself into back in 2006 with it's own attempt to micromanage social media, "The Hub". [MediaPost]
• FINALLY: An aggregated list of websites that will make my decisions for me. Now all I need is some text-to-speech and cheesepuff-to-mouth technology and I'd have this blog covered. [ReadWriteWeb]
• Because we all enjoy lists (as shown by Griner's awesome 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media posted/megatweeted earlier this week), here's a way to devote more time than you ever thought you would to emotions, all thanks to Neatorama and their  "10 Things You Didn't Know About Emoticons". [Neatorama]

As always, if you have any tips or links worth mentioning, send me some social aggregation fodder via the e-mail or on the Twitters.
 

Whitney Sides Mitchell is an intern social media planner for Luckie & Co., founder of the local-music blog BHAM.FM and a music blogger for AL.com. Her Social Pathology Report appears here each Friday.

Special thanks to Admirable Ackbar and lamont_cranston/Flickr for this week's photo.

How to rein in blog comment chaos: three perspectives.

Love 'em or hate 'em, comments are the lifeblood of blogging.

They are the modern writer's affirmation, the sign that anyone is actually listening. They're also subject to mob rule and often hijacked by trolls who pack posts with personal attacks.

This week, Brian Morrissey wrote on AdFreak about a surprisingly public and brutal beat-down among advertising professionals in a blog's comment section. I figured this would be a good time to look at how bloggers and businesses are managing the fray.

I've assembled a small panel of experts to weigh in:

1. The Journalist: Brian Morrissey, aforementioned AdFreak blogger and digital editor for Adweek.
2. The Guru: Mack Collier, social media consultant and corporate blogging maven.
3. The Lawyer: Michael McSunas, Web-savvy attorney for Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel.

Over the next few days, I'll be posting their thoughts on some common comment concerns. Today we start with Brian, since he's the one who got me thinking about this. Check out the Q&A after the jump.