Beta – whereIstand Social Network, See How Your Opinions Compare
Almost everyone loves a good debate, be it on the election happening in the United States this year, or on topics like sport or (my personal favorite) important issues like whether or not Britney Spears will F things up at the MTV Awards again this year (of course she will!).
A social network has recently launched beta (term used loosely since the community appears to be thriving and is quite sophisticated) that allows you to do just that and more.The site, whereIstand.com, is a new Web 2.0 opinion aggregator that people can use to express, find or compare opinions on issues that are important to them.
Even those, who don’t like to debate, may find interest in comparing their views with the public at large, or comparing the opinions of various politicians and celebrities against each other. The options available are pretty impressive.
According to Geoff Decker, Senior Editor, whereIstand.com, public figures are increasingly becoming part of the whereIstand community. Decker said,
We’ve enabled a feature that will allow public figures with accounts on whereIstand to have the ability to take their own stands. Previously, it was the users who are charged with the responsibility of finding evidence for a public figure’s opinion – through information that’s publicly available on the Internet. However, after several public figures expressed an interest in taking their own stands, we created a “public figure member” account for them. Users can still post evidence of their opinions, but the public figure members can take stands as well on issues that that they have an opinion of.
OB readers will find this bit particularly interesting. Decker provided some new details on the site’s prediction analysis along with a link to a report,
At the mid season point of the 2008 MLB baseball season, whereIstand released a report on the accuracy of prediction of public figures for which team would win each respective division. The report can be seen here and it is based on whereIstand issues and opinions, such as Who will win the AL East? (other five related prediction issues can be found on right hand column, under “Related Issues”).
In the coming months, whereIstand developers will begin to distinguish prediction issues by marking which prediction, or pick, turns out to be correct once the event is concluded. Based on this information, you’ll be able to see the history of public figure and member predictions and how often they were right and how often they were wrong. For the prognosticators who are predicting who will win the 2008 presidential election, we will be able to hold them accountable.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 6:03 am and is filed under News, Social Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Goran July 9th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
If you think WhereIStand.com is good for arguing, you should check out http://arg.umentum.com/. Unlike whereistand, which seems to care a lot more about public figures, argumentum is more about arguing with the people you know.. your friends, relatives etc. Personally I find it much more intuitive and stimulating. It was designed based on argumentation theory and several academic papers on the economics of online discussion. Definately check it out if you get the chance.