Week 4

How do you judge the value of expertise on the web? Does it differ from your expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?

At the moment, my fiance and I are trying to register for wedding gifts. Since a lot of this is done online, we have relied heavily on users' reviews of particular products. In order to gauge the users' "expertise" on a particular item, I pay attention to the language they use to describe it. For instance, we liked a set of flatware that was rated 4 out of 5 stars. When we read the reviews, all users had given 5 stars except for one user who rated the flatware 1 star. Her review stated that she thought she was getting an entire set of flatware for $51.09, not just one place setting. That was her only reason for rating the flatware 1 star. After reading her review, her credibility went way down. I no longer considered her review valuable because it was obvious she was not an "expert" in this area.

This real life example illustrates that it takes a little extra work to determine expertise on the web. And even after you have done everything you can do to determine it, it may still not be completely accurate. Someone who posts something to the web could be getting all of their information from other sources...this doesn't mean they are an expert, it just means they know how to research.

Face-to-face settings are different. In face-to-face settings, you have much more opportunity to ask questions and receive answers. For instance, if I had gone to Pottery Barn in person and spoken to a salesperson, I could gauge their expertise by firing off question after question. You are also able to observe someone's body language and tone of voice. All of these things together helps the user to determine the expertise of the user more quickly and perhaps even more accurately.