Should You Create a Ranking?

I recently received the following from a friend:

"I’m not much of an expert on anything? You sure you want me to create a ranking?"

When we created UpGuppy we had two major goals. First, we wanted to develop a tool that would move rankings away from the purview of experts. We were tired of having the folks at VH1 or People tell us who the best artists of the century were or who the sexist man alive was. Second, we wanted to give users the power to dive into the long-tail of rankings. Forget the big, annual ranking that everyone knows about, we were interested in giving users the power to explore the rankings that only a small group of people might care about or that were being ignored by the mainstream media.

The point here is that you can use UpGuppy to rank anything. It doesn’t have to be exhaustive or clever or earth-shattering. It just has to be interesting to you.

I recently created a list of the most pressing issues of our time, which you can check out here. Over the course of a few days, the list grew from 10 items to 28, with issues I had never thought about. The truth is that I was no expert on the matter and chances are neither were many of the people who ranked the list. And therein lies the beauty of the app.

So think about what you’re interested in. Movies, bars, food, sports, politics, whatever. Almost anything you know can be converted into a ranking. And then go for it. Create something, share it with friends and watch it transform.