I recently decided that I could no longer avoid buying an iPhone. Let’s not go into the nasty details, but VoIP over 3G and the hope of tethering are certainly both in the mix. So where is the best place to buy an iPhone, or in my case, a pair of iPhones. It just so happens that I was standing in Best Buy when this question occurred to me. I carefully crafted a tweet to @vark and sent my message out to my social network.
vark 
1 hours ago
Where is the best place to buy an iPhone? Why?
Answers came rolling in and you can read the @vark transcript.
The fastest to answer was Trey, an 18 year old from Arlington, VA. His answer included “duh”, so that one will get marked as not helpful. We can chalk that up to youthful exuberance and move on. It is interesting that the majority of the people answering the question did not understand the emphasis was on the word best and the request for an explanation.
Two good answers came in, one from Julian in Westminster, UK and one from Felix in Lexington Park, MD. These answers justified their choice of the best location although the two locations differed.
Results
The good: Aardvark did provide opinions that were useful. I believe that this question really exemplifies the type of question best handled by a social network.
The bad: Aardvark generated a lot of chaff surrounding the kernels of good data. Even when an answer was well thought out and complete, Julian’s answer may have not been useful since he didn’t have the same retail options as I do.
Aardvark needs to help users self regulate and also needs to progress in who is allowed to answer questions. This will be partially accomplished in two ways, as more people join more subject matter experts will be identified to answer questions and answer feedback will assist in the pairing out of the less qualified.
Word of mouth marketing is moving to social networking. As a result companies are now being forced not only to have a presence on social networks, but to identify experts in systems like Aardvark and ensure that their company is portrayed in the best possible light.