Gov 2.0 Practical Guide Principle #2 – Crowdsource Relevance #OGI

Here’s Principle #2 from our new guide to Gov 2.0, just in time for this week’s OGI show – Crowdsource Relevance

Most social networking sites and communities have so much content, that it can be overwhelming to users. These sites, to varying degrees, make use of crowdsourcing, where users essentially do the work of “classifying” the information. For enterprises, crowdsourcing is a powerful tool that enables the organization to take mountains of information and connect users with only the best and most relevant content.

Just a few examples of crowdsourcing in action include when users bookmark information (which is an implicit endorsement), users mark something as helpful, users visit something (implies popularity), users tag or classify something (when you upload the content) which provides important meta-data. Crowdsourcing, when used in conjunction with social filtering, becomes a powerful tool for government 2.0 initiatives as the information is classified and aggregated for users, enabling them to get the most valuable information fast, sorting information by what their peers find most valuable.