Some comments about strategy, with the benefit of hindsight:
This being the Internet, and my friends being who they are, it was probably somewhat likely that at least one person would guess an absurdly large number, just for the hell of it. If that happened then you would ideally pick a large, but less absurdly large, number, since that would put you closer to the average than if you just picked a random smallish number. The big problems with this strategy are: (1) the terms 'absurdly large', 'less absurdly large', and 'smallish' mean different things to different people; and (2) if everyone thinks this way then you'll end up with a bunch of picks in the 'less absurdly large' range, whatever that is, and your advantage will be neutralized. Nonetheless, I think at least a couple of people used this reasoning (including possibly the person who picked the biggest number, since it wasn't the largest possible number; someone could have picked a bunch of nines, or used scientific notation).
I had wondered in advance if anyone would reveal their guess in the comments (which I didn't forbid), and if it would be in their advantage to do so. I think theoretically it might be advantageous to do so if nobody else has already revealed their guess; if someone else has then it's generally a bad idea, because then new contestants can pick the average of the already-revealed scores. Anyway, nobody did reveal their guesses.
One strategy a couple of people used was trash-talking, which I thoroughly approve of.
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This being the Internet, and my friends being who they are, it was probably somewhat likely that at least one person would guess an absurdly large number, just for the hell of it. If that happened then you would ideally pick a large, but less absurdly large, number, since that would put you closer to the average than if you just picked a random smallish number. The big problems with this strategy are: (1) the terms 'absurdly large', 'less absurdly large', and 'smallish' mean different things to different people; and (2) if everyone thinks this way then you'll end up with a bunch of picks in the 'less absurdly large' range, whatever that is, and your advantage will be neutralized. Nonetheless, I think at least a couple of people used this reasoning (including possibly the person who picked the biggest number, since it wasn't the largest possible number; someone could have picked a bunch of nines, or used scientific notation).
I had wondered in advance if anyone would reveal their guess in the comments (which I didn't forbid), and if it would be in their advantage to do so. I think theoretically it might be advantageous to do so if nobody else has already revealed their guess; if someone else has then it's generally a bad idea, because then new contestants can pick the average of the already-revealed scores. Anyway, nobody did reveal their guesses.
One strategy a couple of people used was trash-talking, which I thoroughly approve of.