EXPERIMENT 1

Is facebook a good enough medium to gather information, ideas and opinions? Simply put, can facebook serve as a platform to assimilate knowledge?

In order to help answer this question I sent out the following message via the facebook inbox facility to a group of friends, both in the country and over seas.
Sweater Pillow
September 9 at 4:02pm

"Hey!I'm doing a bit of research on collective intelligence and was wondering if you could all spare a wee bit of time from your hectic schedules to answer this question. It doesn't matter if its a simple yes or no, or a giant explanation as to why or why not. Its just a simple experiment.

So heres the question :

Has advances in mobile technology like the Iphone and the Blackberry made it impossible for us to "switch off"? Thanks for your time.

Also, im going to bribe you with chocolate. If you do actually participate, you get yummy chocolate. For any of you weight watchers, I'll buy you a diet coke, or a schooner of Super Dry, whichever you prefer. (I'm living off a student budget)
Thanks!! "

Evidence:

Out of the 20 people I involved in my study, 11 wrote back to me. This shows that although facebook can be an interesting new medium of information gathering, it also has its drawbacks. Although its great scope to involve the intelligence of a wide range of people from different feilds of life, undeniable, facebook is often considered to be more of a recreational social network rather than a space for information assimilation, such as a blog. The credibility of the information that is posted on facebook thus can also pose to be somewhat of an issue. To sum it up...

Conclusion :

The type of response depends on
1. The question
2. The relevance of the question
3. The network