Is someone predating on Collective Intelligence

Are you a modern traveler? Do you research through the
endless travel sites, bulletin boards , google maps mashups with travel sites to get context sensitive travel data ? You may need to re-think before you do so next time!!As a recent study suggests that entities with vested interest are trying to manipulate the wisdom of crowd by giving incentives for a favorable review.As explained here

Consequently,the economist travel advisory is moving away from the bottom of the pyramid where the so-called wisdom lies to the vertex of the pyramid towards the single-source guides!(Referece:The Economist)

But what I feel is the better model would be not to base ones deductions on the object of interest , say hotel if you are a traveler.Instead you would be more precise and less gullible if you base your decision making process with the selected sample size of the crowd who have similar tastes or likings.
I do agree that there is a huge challenge in finding the right sample population from the astronomic crowd.But applications like Likaholix
are taking steps in this directions.

I believe that wisdom of crowd is still relevant provided we use it as a vector quantity having both magnitude and direction rather than a scalar quantity with only magnitude!

Image Courtsey : The source of this image is Rathika Ramasamy and is available under the following creative commons license.





Is someone predating on Collective Intelligence by Shudh-Eternally surprised Blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 India License.