The 5th Estate: Citizen News » ratings http://www.biverson.com/5th-estate How economics, open source, digitization, and the 21st century are transforming journalism by Barbara K. Iverson Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:07:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Rating Game – The Atlantic (July/August 2009) http://www.biverson.com/5th-estate/2009/07/the-rating-game-the-atlantic-julyaugust-2009/ http://www.biverson.com/5th-estate/2009/07/the-rating-game-the-atlantic-julyaugust-2009/#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:17:37 +0000 Barbara Iverson http://www.biverson.com/5th-estate/?p=174 The proliferation in ratings is already changing societal dynamics. Look at its impact on the relationship between doctors and patients. According to Pew, 47 percent of Internet users now search online for information about doctors. Ratings, though still just a trickle, are increasingly part of that information. Now, if a medical practice routinely leaves patients in the waiting room for two hours—or leaves a spare scalpel in someone’s abdomen—the whole world will know. The power shift ticks off doctors so much, about 2,000 have turned to a company called Medical Justice, which offers advice about using legal and bullying tactics to stop doctor ratings. (Predictably, lawyers have sued—so far unsuccessfully—to shut down Avvo, a lawyer-rating site.)

Today’s ratings are only the raw material for what’s to come. Rearden Commerce’s Web-based personal assistant already helps employees in corporations like ConAgra make travel plans, by quizzing them about their age, income, job, family situation, lifestyle, and preferences like favorite types of restaurants. (JPMorgan Chase will roll out a Rearden-based travel adviser to its credit-card customers later this year.) The next step, says Rearden CEO Patrick Grady, is to pull in ratings from all over the Web and mash them up with anonymous information from Rearden users. Then, if a beef-loving cat-litter salesman is traveling to Dallas, the system can recommend a top-rated steak house where other cat-litter reps have had luck taking pet-shop owners to close deals.

via The Rating Game – The Atlantic (July/August 2009).

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