One of my resident roles in the Lab is to work with clients as they consider different methods for Crowdsourcing. Today, CNet’s got a quick writeup about the efforts at Collective Intellect:

The idea is to give traders back the early and easy access to critical data that they used to have when this information came through many fewer channels. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a Bloomberg terminal or subscriptions to news services could give you a jump on the hoi polloi. Today, it’s the masses that often have the jump, thanks to blogs and other tipster sites.

“They aren’t sure where a story will break and how it will break,” said Don Springer, Collective Intellect’s CEO. “Traders are going crazy.”

The system examines about 150,000 new postings a day. Then it analyzes them for sentiment–is it causing a stock to go up or down?–and credibility. The company then sends out data feeds and e-mails on stock activity and interesting news to subscribers.

Putting blogs to work for Wall Street | CNET News.com

I am sure that this arena will continue to mature over time in many different directions than we’re considering now. As an old friend from JD Power taught me: “There’s data and then there’s information.” We’re still in a data-rich world as far as it comes to social media - companies like Collective Intellect and BuzzLogic are starting to lay down the bridges that materialize the intelligence we’re seeking.

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