Social media has already changed the way people find new music, TV shows, and cat pictures, but distilling your friends’ sense of taste is a natural function of gathering all their opinions. Using social media for decisions that normally rely on years of experience and expertise seems less reliable. But a recent study from the City University of Hong Kong, Purdue University and Georgia Institute of Technology argues that social media is able to consistently beat the market, as long as it has certain characteristics in place (h/t Yuliya Chernova at The Wall Street Journal). In their paper Wisdom of Crowds:…