Author: ideas_admin

How to split the good from the bad in online reviews and ratings Basing purchasing decisions solely on online product reviews may be unwise. www.shutterstock.com Adrian R. Camilleri, RMIT University A lot of consumers, when searching online for something to buy, will take a look at an online review or rating for a product. It seems like a great way to get an unfiltered view on quality but research indicates most online reviews are too simple and may misguide consumers. According to one United States survey, 78.5% of American consumers looked for information online about a product or service,...

Rating, ranking and recommending: Three R’s for the internet age Stars via shutterstock.com Christopher Brinton, Princeton University and Mung Chiang, Princeton University This holiday season, when we Google for the most trending gifts, compare different items on Amazon or take a break to watch a holiday movie on Netflix, we are making use of what might be called “the three R’s” of the Internet Age: rating, ranking and recommending. Much like the traditional “three R’s” of education – “reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic” – no modern education is complete without understanding how websites’ algorithms combine, process and synthesize information before...

How Facebook – the Wal-Mart of the internet – dismantled online subcultures In the mid-1990s, body modification enthusiasts – a long-ostracized subculture – created an online community that incorporated blogs, dating and wikis. philippe leroyer/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND Jessa Lingel, University of Pennsylvania Before the internet, people interested in body modification – not just tattoo and piercing enthusiasts, but those drawn to more unusual practices like ear pointing, tongue splitting, suspension, scarification and the voluntary amputation of limbs and organs – had a difficult time meeting others who shared their interests. The internet, of course, changed everything: You can chat...

Email isn’t dead – and it’s helping to keep newspapers alive Kaspars Grinvalds Andrew Jack, University of Oxford Just over a year ago, Stewart Butterfield – who invented the rapidly growing message app Slack – joined the list of prophets declaring that email was dead and that productivity apps like his were a more effective means of business communication. He is not the first – and will no doubt not be the last – to predict the demise of email, but nearly four decades since the first emails were sent, they have only grown as a mainstay of human...