Idea 1: Comments without Meaning, People without Context

Problem:

The Web is not only filled with comments – with people wanting to share their experiences with others – it is also filled with people longing for advice on the things they don’t know or are going to do for the first time. However, comments on the web lose some of their power, as one important element is missing: the identity behind the person who made the comment. Without it, no true relationship exists between the reader and the composer, leading to a mere skimming through the number of positive or negative entries that are supposed to help the reader decide between a “yes” and a “no” decision; an overall simplified process that does not represent the individuality of neither the composer nor the reader.

Solution:

Based on the hypothesis that people tend to rather believe people they “know” over people they don’t know when deciding to accept advice or not, the unknown needs to be unrevealed. In this case, a standardized process for comparison could be introduced that is not based on the actual identity of a person but more his/her degree of being alike to another counterpart; the reader. For example: Knowing that another person has scored similar/completely different to oneself on a personality test, might imply that oneself would tend to agree that there is some sort of likeness/difference between oneself and the other. Taking it one step further, one might even be more open to accept advice from the one rather than the other. When applying this to the overall problem, creating a system that allows for comparison of a standardized variable between commentator and reader, might give more meaning to the comments made on the internet, keeping in mind the high probability that a reader will also be a commentator and vice versa at some point in time. This can be implemented on a single website such as through specific travel related questions and a resulting score when looking at travel websites for example, or in general through an add-on that is the same between all commentators across the web.