Oprah uses “crowdsourcing” as publicity
Oprah, the billionaire “queen of all media,” reached out to the Internet for help with a recent show — or to stir up some publicity for a recent show, depending on how you look at it. She posted a question to Yahoo Answers, which is a kind of “wisdom of the crowds” site in which people ask questions and then others answer, and anyone can vote on which answers they like the best. The question was “What would you do with $1,000 to change the life of a perfect stranger?”
Here’s the intro that someone at the Oprah show wrote:
You may have heard about the concept of paying it forward — the idea of doing something meaningful to help someone else without asking for anything in return. So, if you were given $1,000 with the understanding that it had to be used to help others, how would you use the money and why? To see how others turned these endless possibilities into amazing results, watch Monday’s “Oprah.”
Just a cynical attempt at boosting ratings for a show, right? Except that Oprah’s question got more than 31,000 responses in just a few days, some of which were heartbreakingly personal. The number one response according to readers? “Give it to Christian Blind Mission International… for example, $33 will heal a father or mother of blindness from cataracts. $200 will do the same for a child.” Some details from the actual show are here.
Oprah’s question got the most responses Yahoo Answers has ever gotten on a question, beating the previous record set by another celebrity: Dr. Stephen Hawking — the author of “A Brief History of Time” and the man who holds the Lucasian chair in Mathematics at Cambridge, once held by Sir Isaac Newton — who asked how the human race could survive the next 100 years. He got about 25,000 responses.
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(On Nov 28th, 2006 at 8:49 pm)
[…] Obviously, there’s some publicity value to having the question appear on Yahoo Answers, since I would imagine other people are going to notice it and write about it other than Search Engine Journal, Greg Sterling of Screenwerk and me. Incidentally, as far as I can tell Ms. Clinton now holds the record for most responses to a question on Yahoo, beating both Oprah and physicist Stephen Hawking, whose flirtation with Yahoo Answers I wrote about on my media blog awhile back. […]
(On Nov 28th, 2006 at 11:56 pm)
[…] Obviously, there’s some publicity value to having the question appear on Yahoo Answers, since I would imagine other people are going to notice it and write about it other than Search Engine Journal, Greg Sterling of Screenwerk and me. Incidentally, as far as I can tell Ms. Clinton now holds the record for most responses to a question on Yahoo, beating both Oprah and physicist Stephen Hawking, whose flirtation with Yahoo Answers I wrote about on my media blog awhile back. […]
(On Nov 28th, 2006 at 8:59 pm)
[…] Either someone smart is working with Senator - and would-be POTUS - Hillary Clinton, or she is a lot hipper to the Web 2.0 jive than I might have thought. According to Search Engine Journal, Hillary (or someone from her team) posted a question about health-care on Yahoo Answers, and last time I looked she had gotten more than 33,000 responses in just a little over 24 hours. The question she has asked is this: “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?” Underneath the question, the site makes it clear that hosting the question isn’t meant to express support for any particular party (maybe Barack Obama should post a question asking “Should I change my name or sue CNN for calling me Osama?”). This is interesting stuff - call it Politics 2.0. Obviously, there’s some publicity value to having the question appear on Yahoo Answers, since I would imagine other people are going to notice it and write about it other than Search Engine Journal, Greg Sterling of Screenwerk and me. Incidentally, as far as I can tell Ms. Clinton now holds the record for most responses to a question on Yahoo, beating both Oprah and physicist Stephen Hawking, whose flirtation with Yahoo Answers I wrote about on my media blog awhile back. Still, apart from the pure publicity value, and the street cred she gets for being down with the Web 2.0 kids, I would agree with Greg that there is definitely something interesting going on here. Where it will lead (if anywhere) remains to be seen. Comments Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark WebProNews: View All Articles by Mathew Ingram Receive Our Daily Email of Breaking eBusiness News About the Author: Mathew Ingram is a technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at http://www.mathewingram.com/work and http://www.mathewingram.com/media. WebProNews RSS Feed More Blog Talk Articles Contact WebProNews […]
(On Nov 28th, 2006 at 6:01 am)
[…] Obviously, there’s some publicity value to having the question appear on Yahoo Answers, since I would imagine other people are going to notice it and write about it other than Search Engine Journal, Greg Sterling of Screenwerk and me. Incidentally, as far as I can tell Ms. Clinton now holds the record for most responses to a question on Yahoo, beating both Oprah and physicist Stephen Hawking, whose flirtation with Yahoo Answers I wrote about on my media blog awhile back. […]