Versatile Amphibian

This morning, I have been mostly reading about: social search. A couple of links for you: Advertising Age and Google . The premise (for the time poor) is that your friends' opinions on topics you've searched for should be returned on your Google (or Yahoo, or Bing) search results so you can see what your 'tribe' think of what you're looking for. It's a nice idea and gives the search engine a nice rich seam of personal data to mine for future gain. That gain, however, seems difficult to quantify for the advertiser. Precisely how Toyota (for example) should design, market and support its products differently because of social search is unclear. In my view, social search will further amplify the strengths and weaknessed of particular product lines, hence polarising success and failure and leaving little middle ground for mediocre, but acceptable merchandise and services. I suspect that we will be seeing some interesting effects of this type of service in the next

I read an amusing article in Forbes last week about Symbian, the world's most common and least interesting mobile phone OS ( link ). The journalist's contention is that by ' crowdsourcing ' (a repulsive management term that makes me flinch every time I hear it) Symbian produces an engaging and multifaceted product. My opinion is the opposite. To me, the wisdom of the crowd is a con that excuses lazy or untalented product designers from their responsibilities. The great leaps forward in human understanding have almost all come from the inspiration of a few individuals, not from some loosely democratic design-by-committee. Even giant technological feats like the Manhattan Project were driven by a core group of smart people who had the vision and ability to see and accomplish their goal. To take a more relavent example: Apple's design team consists of a small group, working out of California. Sure, they have great understanding of the needs of the crowd, but they certa