To conduct the research, Kostakos worked with a large sample of online ratings. As MIT's Technology Review reports, the researcher and his team studied hundreds of thousands of items and millions of votes across all three sites. In each and every case, they discovered that small numbers of users accounted for the largest number of ratings. For example, on Amazon, only 5% of active Amazon users ever cast votes on more than 10 products but a small handful of users voted on hundreds of items. Said Kostakos, "if you have two or three people voting 500 times, the results may not be representative of the community overall."

This is hardly the first time that the so-called "wisdom of the crowds" has been called into question. The term, which implies that a diverse collection of individuals makes more accurate decisions and predications than individuals or even experts, has been used in the past to describe how everything from Wikipedia to user-generated news sites like Digg.com offer better services than anything created by a smaller group could do.

Of course, we now know that simply isn't true. For one thing, Wikipedia isn't written and edited by the "crowd" at all. In fact, 1% of Wikipedia users are responsible for half of the site's edits. Even Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has been quoted as saying that the site is really written by a community, "a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers."

And as for Digg.com, a site whose algorithm is constantly tweaked in attempts to democratize the votes of its users, it still remains a place where a handful of power users can make or break getting a news item to the site's front page.

Attempts to Address the Issue

It's not surprising then to discover that, when it comes to review sites, it's again small groups that are in control there too. Some sites, including Amazon, attempt to address this discrepancy by allowing users to vote on the helpfulness of reviews - a much easier process than having to write a review yourself. Also, local business finder and recommendations site Yelp implemented ways for business owners to respond to what they feel are inaccurate reviews by way of an owner comments feature. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, the small groups still remain in control of these so-called "popular opinion" features.

According to the article, another professor at CMU, Niki Kittur, suggested that sites create new tools for transparency. For example, there should be an easy way to see a summary of a user's contributions which would quickly reveal any bias. He also suggested removing overly positive and negative reviews.

Earlier this year, we looked at another user-generated review site which attacked this problem from another angle. Lunch.com, a new Yelp competitor, uses something they call their "Similarity Network" which matches you to other site users who share your interests. That way, instead of looking at a list of reviews which could originate from anyone with an agenda or axe to grind, you're focused on reviews from others like you.

Still, there is yet to be a perfect solution to the problem. Perhaps it's time we give up the idea that the "wisdom of the crowds" was ever a driving force behind any socialized, user-generated anything and realize that, just like in life, there will always be active participants as well as the passive passerbys.

Earlier this year, Zotero, which is based at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, opened up the online components to its service when it released the first beta of version 1.5 of its plugin, including the ability to access a backup of libraries online and sync between different computers, as well as some very rudimentary social networking features.

Today's update represents a major step forward from Zotero's first online offerings. Now, users who are working on collaborative projects can finally share their research in an easy, straightforward manner. If you are working on a research project in a group, for example, you can now easily create a new group and all the members of the group can just add the papers and books they found to this new group, including notes and other remarks they added to the new entry.

Sadly, though, Zotero doesn't offer a storage solution yet, so every group member still has to track down the actual documents (the team is looking into adding this function, though).

Groups Make Zotero a Great Tool for Users Outside of Academia as Well

This update will also make Zotero more interesting for users outside of academia. While the service's focus is obviously on making it easy for academic users to manage their research and to create bibliographies, Zotero can also function as a general bookmarking tool for any kind of purpose.

Coming Soon: Recommendations, Storage, Feeds

Some of the most exciting changes to Zotero are still ahead. The team also announced that it expects to roll out a recommendation engine in the near future, as well as a storage solution for sharing attached files (PDFs of academic papers, for example), as well as the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds from public groups and libraries.

Make a Backup!

If you are already using Zotero, we recommend that you back your library up before you update. In our own experience, Zotero updates have never been a problem, but the data you have saved in Zotero so far is probably something you don't want to lose due to a freak accident.

Is Facebook after Grandma and Grandpa now that they have mom and dad? You bet.

You then have the option of inviting more members to join the group. In Step 2, there are boxes provided to enter in the names of your family members already on Facebook. If you need more boxes, just click the green plus sign below. Finally, and likely the reason why Facebook created these groups in the first place, there is an option to invite other people in your family to join Facebook.

You can type in email addresses by hand or import them from your email address book. (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Apple Mail, and many others are supported.)

The group, once created, looks like any other Facebook group with a Member List, Discussion Board, Wall, Events Section, etc. However, there's a big difference between this group and others you'll find on Facebook. It's a completely private group, not visible to anyone else.

Facebook explains this in the "Group Type" box:

This is a secret group. It will not show up in your profile, and only admins can invite members.

In other words, you can post away in here without worries that your online friends will see your activity. The only exception to this, unfortunately, is with the events. When you go to create an event within the group, it's shared either with your local network (in my case that's Tampa Bay) or all of Facebook. The supposedly "secret" group is listed as the host of the event. So much for privacy. It would have been nice to use this feature to track family gatherings, but there's no need to broadcast every anniversary and family reunion to the entire social network that is Facebook.

Sadly, this Events section is yet another example of how Facebook forces public sharing on you even while pretending they're offering you a completely private venue.

Still, assuming you have enough family members willing to join Facebook - and based on these latest statistics, it's likely that you do - this new feature could end up being a great place to communicate and share content with your family. In fact, we expect that this single feature may even lead to an explosion of Facebook sign-ups from Grandmas and Grandpas everywhere. It might even attract some of the younger kids away from MySpace so they can hang out with the family on Facebook. On second thought, maybe not. it might just make Facebook look even more like that uncool place online where all those grownups hang out.

Thanks to AllFacebook for discovering this new feature!

DocVerse currently consists of a 1 MB Office 2007 plug-in that gives Microsoft's desktop software new collaboration and synchronization abilities. Once installed, every time you hit the "save" button in Office, a web version stored online is automatically updated, too. The web version also comes with a link you can share.

If that part sounds a lot like what's already available in Microsoft's Live Workspace, that's because it is. Like DocVerse, Live Workspace users can also install a plugin into Office that keeps files between computer and web in sync.

However, the key difference between DocVerse and any of Microsoft's current offerings is the service's online collaboration abilities. With DocVerse, a group editing feature lets multiple users edit one copy of the same document without having to check it out, then check it back in.

To begin using the software, you can share a document with others using either the URL provided or by entering in the email addresses of those you want to share with. As changes are made, they're synced back to the online version of the document. The DocVerse software then uses a confliction resolution system to deal with any potential conflicts between the updates. As the edits continue, DocVerse automatically creates new versions of the document while saving the older versions in case you need to revert back.

DocVerse users will also see their changes categorized in an in-file "News Feed" which appears in the sidebar of any open document. For users without Office, feedback can be given about the shared files straight from their web browser.

At launch time, the plug-in works with Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 only, but support for Word and Excel 2007 will roll out later this spring as will support for Office 2003. DocVerse is Windows-only.

Some Questions

Microsoft announced the upcoming Microsoft Office Web applications at their Professional Developers Conference in October. With these web applications, due in the next version of Office (Office 14), users will be able to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents through the browser (IE, Firefox, or Safari). Despite some initial rumors, Office Web Applications will not require Silverlight to run and they'll even  work on the iPhone via the Safari browser.

That obviously made us wonder - how will DocVerse compete with Microsoft's own offering? Says DocVerse CEO Shan Shina, the key will be backward compatibility. Where the official Microsoft Office Web Applications will focus only on the latest and greatest version of Office (he presumes - no one really knows), DocVerse will aim to be compatible with Office 2003, 2007, and the upcoming Office 14. Given that 35-40 percent of the market still runs Office 2003 and 15-20 percent runs 2007, he imagines it will be a while before everyone upgrades to Office 14 - web apps or not.

While capitalizing on the "good enough" trend, the company will also focus on how they can best complement the newer Office 14 when it becomes available. In other words, no matter what Microsoft throws out there, DocVerse plans to provide the missing features.

Try it! (Invites)

To learn more about how DocVerse works, Web Worker Daily has a great hands-on review. Our readers can try DocVerse for themselves by clicking here: http://www.docverse.com?ic=RWW. There are only 200 invites available, so that link is first come, first serve.

Disclosure: Sarah Perez also writes for Microsoft's Channel 10.

The good news? Twitter now has that groups feature you've always wanted - if you happen to be located in Japan. The bad news? Hope you liked that last tweet, because there's no getting rid of it now.

Twitter launches groups in Japan

As Loic says "So Twitter doesn't have groups in the US, but it does in Japan?" Yes, it would seem that way.

At first blush, the new group feature appears to be very similar to the "#hashtag" functionality that Twitter users have used to track conversations, combined with the ability to subscribe to that tag as one would via Twitter Search nee Summize. For an example of the group function in action, see the Twicco group on the iPhone.

Could this group functionality be a glimpse of a much-requested feature slated for the broader Twitter market? Only time will tell.

Now, the second part of the story. The part about "what Twitter taketh away."

Ever had a tweet that you regretted? Sure, we all have. And at that point, we simply went to the "trash can" icon to eliminate that errant missive. One click and the tweet was expunged from the permanent record.

But now? It appears that Twitter has removed the ability to delete tweets - and that includes both direct and public timeline tweets. No more trash can.

While no formal announcement has been made, Twitter users have been actively griping about the missing functionality. Clearly, people miss the ability to remove unwanted or duplicate tweets.

So, why delete delete? Good question. To save the fragile Twitter architecture? To make way for something new? To simply ensure that Twitter had the ability to withstand the US political turmoil?

At this point - with no official announcement - anything would be conjecture. That said, it's safe to assume that something is in the works, if only avoiding the re-emergence of the Fail Whale.

[Update] As of 10 AM Pacific time, November 5, delete has been restored. It appears that the functionality was temporarily suspended as part of the effort to ensure Twitter remained up during the US Presidential election coverage.