SRmedia Case Studies: Can You Beat the Crowd? Online Oscar Challenge

Oscar Challenge: Can You Beat the Crowd?
(Online 2005, 2006)

AN AFTER-HOURS CHALLENGE:
In 2005 and again in 2006, Stu produced an online Oscar challenge to test the premise of "The Wisdom of Crowds," a recent book by James Surowiecki. (Copies of the book were offered as prizes.) Players were asked to sign up on a web page and to predict Oscar winners from a standard ballot. The twist, however, involved the crowd consensus. To "win" the challenge, players had to predict more winners correctly than the crowd did as a whole.

FIRST EVENT (2005):
Simple web pages collected and displayed player predictions. Results were posted after the Oscar telecast.

SECOND EVENT (2006):
Enhancements included internal message boards to monitor "the buzz," real-time updates of player standings versus "The Crowd" during the Oscar telecast, and automated e-mail to encourage players to update their predictions.

TECHNOLOGY, INTERFACE:
Home-brewed web site using PHP/MySql

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