For example, Wize.com is a customer review site founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Doug Baker. The site provides reviews for everything from computers and MP3 players to coffee makers and baby strollers. But why do we need another place for reviews? If you’re using the Web to research what digital camera to buy for your father-in-law, you probably feel there are far too many sites out there already. By the time you have scrolled through one store’s customer reviews for each candidate camera and then cross-referenced the positive and the negative with the expert reviews at each of your bookmarked consumer magazines, you have to start the process again just to remember what people said. Wize in fact aims at exactly that problem. It pulls together reviews from many outside sources and aggregates them into three piles: user reviews, expert reviews (with links to the online publications), and the general "buzz." (For shoppers looking for a quick read on a product, Wize assigns an overall ranking.) When Wize reports that 97 percent of users love the Nikon D200 camera, it includes links to the online stores where the user reviews are posted, so customers are driven back to the businesses to spend their money.

Zillow.com does something similar for real estate. The people behind Expedia.com, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, were looking for a new business idea--and were in the market for new homes. After hunting for information, they found that most of it was locked into the multiple listings sites of the National Association of Realtors. Now Zillow takes those listings and mashes them up with additional information that can help a potential purchaser find exactly what she wants. The most dramatic mashup right now is the "heat map" that uses swaths of color to let you tell at a glance what are the most expensive and most affordable areas. At some point, though, Zillow or one of its emerging competitors will mash up listing information with school ratings, crime maps, and aircraft flight patterns.

Wize and Zillow make money by selling advertising, but their value is in the way their sites aggregate the miscellaneous--letting lots of independent sources flock together, all in one place.

We’re seeing the same trend in industry after industry, including music, travel, and the news media. Information gets released into the wild (sometimes against a company’s will), where it joins up with other information, and the act of aggregating adds value. Companies lose some control, but they gain market presence and smarter customers. The companies that are succeeding in the new digital skies are the ones that allow their customers to add their own information and the aggregators to mix it up, because whether or not information wants to be free, it sure wants to flock.

Customer Reviews:
An amazing journey into new ways of organizing information	Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
More than ever, knowledge is power, and as computerization and digitalization reshape society, the way knowledge is organized dictates how people obtain it and apply it. In this fascinating book, philosophy professor David Weinberger chronicles the history of changes in access to knowledge. He shows how Internet-based enterprises such as iTunes and Wikipedia reflect new rules of knowledge organization. This intellectually provocative and well-researched book explains the true impact of the information revolution. The only thing missing from this original, incisive and entertaining workbook is a glossary. While some readers may need other sources of information for certain technical definitions, getAbstract considers this book a must-read for anyone who wants to learn how the knowledge revolution has reshaped business and society.
An important topic, but a rambling book	Customer Rating: 2 out of 5
This book covers an important topic - how we classify, sort and find information in an information-overloaded world - but it meanders, rambles and wanders aimlessly in getting to the point. The most valuable part of the book comes almost half-way in, when Weinberger lists his four key strategies for organising information in this new world: 1. Filter on the way out, not on the way in. 2. Put each leaf on as many branches as possible. 3. Everything is metadata and everything can be a label. 4. Give up control. If you're interested in the history of the Dewey Decimal System, Wikipedia and the Universal Alphabet, read this book. But if you're not, I think I've given you all you need to know.
One-sided	Customer Rating: 3 out of 5
Some very interesting observations here, but the core proposition -- that informally networked structures are a better way to organise information than hierarchies -- is too one-sided. The truth is that both are important in different contexts and for different purposes. See Alex Wright's "Glut" for a more balanced view.
Great but repetitive	Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
An enjoyable read for the first few chapters ... a very interesting explanation of the changing nature of information and categorization in the digital age. However then it starts to get more and more repetitive ... new examples are compared to the old ones but the concepts remain the same. Bottom line is I do recommend the book, but plan to start skimming about 1/3 of the way through ...
Miscellaneous is Useless	Customer Rating: 1 out of 5
The absolute, random nonsense demonstrated by Weinberger is annoying and irritating. It begins with perpetual, useless information which he incorporates into his book. There is far too much "background" information that serves no purpose in supporting the main theme of the book. His arrogant, know-it-all way of writing sends the message, "Hey! Look at me! I'm writing a book... about whatever the hell I want". I would compare him to the type of person that talks, just to hear himself talk. Even his style of writing seems as though someone is merely typing his words as he speaks them. He is the old embellishing story telling grandfather you just can't get to shut up. Some aspects of his writing are just downright ridiculous. It seems like he just makes half the stuff up as he goes. And the other half is part of an unnecessary history lesson. These lessons are degrading to the readers through his language use and explanations. He also confuses the word miscellaneous with disorganized. Even the book's organization itself is a mess, mostly due to the continuous rambling. Some might find this a neutral book storing information, but in reality, it contains disguised, swaying opinions. Most importantly, the book contains dim-witted contradictions. Prove it? Page sixty-three paragraph two directly contradicts page seventy-one paragraph two, where at first he claims that knowledge has no shape, and then explains that the shape of knowledge is changing due to technology. I do not recommend that anyone read this book.