crowd sourcing

Page history last edited by Brian D Butler 1 yr ago

googlegadget errorPlugin error: googlegadget (Plugin not found ../common/plugins/googlegadget.inc)

 

 

Table of Contents 

  1. What is "Crowd-Sourcing"
  2. Crowd Funding
    1. Examples:
  3. Social Investing:
  4. Philosophy behind the movement...
  5. Open Innovation
  6. Social bookmarking:  
  7. Open source software
  8. Limitations of Crowdsourcing:
  9. Innovative models using the Crowd:
  10. Crowd-sourcing design
  11. Links to KookyPlan pages 
  12. External Links:
  13. Books worth Reading:

 

 

What is "Crowd-Sourcing"

 

a method for using the public, typically via the Internet, to supply creative content (or even funding!), with special applications in information services, research and development, T-shirt designs, stock photos, advertising spots. 

 

 

Crowd Funding

 

Similar concept to crowdsourcing, but, in crowdfunding, they supply the cash (not just the content).   Instead of seeking investment from a Angel investors (or Venture Capital investors), what crowdfunding does is use small investments many individual people, who then vote and apply the "wisdom of crowds" in choosing which investments to make.

 

 

Examples:

  • charities
  • Brave New Worlds, a Hollywood studio...is financing its movies by soliciting people over the Internet to pay for them before they are made.
  • list of examples here:  http://crowdfunding.pbwiki.com/

 

 

Social Investing:

 

Using the power of the crowd to make investing decisions.  See our discussion on social finance websites

 

 

Philosophy behind the movement...

Using the power of groups (to make better products/ services)

 

Sites like Wikipedia tap into the collective knowledge of groups and create products better than individual companies can (think Encyclopedia Britannica, for example).   But the concept of group sourcing has applications way beyond simple encyclopedias.  For example we see companies tapping the collective knowledge of community to crowd-design clothing lines, pick the winner of American Idol, fund a football team, or even to predict the future.  

 

 

Open Innovation

 

One of the most interesting impacts of the interconnectivity of people through the internet has been the development of social computing and innovation.  As was outlined in a very interesting book (Wikinomics), there has been a fundamental shift in thinking among leading innovators that there is a need to tap into expertise and knowledge outside the confines of the traditional corporate infrastructure.  Companies are looking for outside help in developing products and in doing amazing new things.  This wisdom of engaging your customers, suppliers, competitors and academia in order to innovate and create new and better products and services is a fundamentally new way of looking at things.  But its being wholeheartedly embraced by such corporate heavyweights such as Proctor and Gamble (see "connect and innovate") that its making other business people take notice of the impressive results.  Please feel free to add your thoughts and insights into this very interesting trend....

 

Examples:

 

 

Social bookmarking:  

 

have you ever liked a website enough to save it in your "favorites"?  Sure you have.  But, social bookmarking takes this one step further. Instead of saving the "favorite" on your desktop, you save it to an online site, and then you can always find your favorites no matter where you are.  The most famous of all social bookmarking sites is:  http://del.icio.us/  .  Other  interesting companies to watch are: trailfire, and:

 

 

Open source software

is a trend that makes for-profit software companies shake in their boots.  The concept is simple...a bunch of computer geeks get together and offer for free what other companies are trying to charge for.  and, by the power of the masses, they can offer better software, with more timely updates, and by getting a mass of users, they guarantee market share.  But where are the profits, you might ask?  How about going public?  One of the most-anticipated tech IPOs of the year has been that of open-source database company MySQL. It seemed like they were ready to go public back in the beginning of the year. Now I am hearing chatter from hedge fund circles that the filing may be imminent. Last I checked, nothing has been filed with the SEC yet. Investors, including Benchmark, Index, IVP, Intel, and SAP, have put in more than $39 million to date.  mySQL claims a 25 percent share of the database market. It is unclear how compelling its economics are, but if its IPO does well (assuming it ever happens), that would open the door eventually for other open-source startups such as Openads (open-source ad server) and Automattic (which has built a business on top of the open-source blogging platform, Wordpress), among others.

 

 

 

 

Limitations of Crowdsourcing:

 

As the idea spreads, its limitations are becoming apparent. Once the initial excitement fades, some firms are realising that crowdsourcing can be more expensive than doing things themselves. Ask the internet crowds for a new product design, for example, and you may find that submissions have also been sent to rival firms, or have been stolen from elsewhere. Checking that submissions do not infringe copyright can be a nightmare; simply designing things in-house can be the cheaper and safer option.

 

There are other reasons why crowdsourcing and commerce make uneasy bedfellows. Most crowdsourcing projects rely on volunteers, and people are much less willing to volunteer if they feel someone else is profiting from their hard work. Wikipedia's success may have much to do with the fact that it is run by a non-profit organisation. A commercial version of it would probably have to find a way to reward contributors.

 

And even those companies that do try to share the proceeds from commercial crowdsourcing are not safe.

 

 

"A pioneer of for-profit crowdsourcing was Cambrian House, a company based in Calgary that encouraged people to send in ideas for new software products, had the community evaluate them, and then funded the winners. It sounded like a great idea, but the company sold its assets in May and its chief executive acknowledged that its business model had failed. Perhaps it should have crowdsourced the management of the company, too?" - source:  economist magazine

In analysis, they were not very well funded, and narrowly focused on software development ideas.  

On the other hand, there is another site called "Springwise" that is crowdsourcing ideas from the internet, and seems to be doing quite well.  I read their newsletter each month, and they seem to get better and better over time....

 

 

Innovative models using the Crowd:

 

 

Examples:

  • spot.us - Journalism - community funded: the idea is to solicit ideas for investigative articles and the money to pay for the reporting.  Spot Us plans to post its articles on its Web site and give them to newspapers that want to publish them. If a newspaper wants exclusive rights to an article, the paper will have to pay for it....read more...http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/weekinreview/24kershaw.html?emc=rss&partner=rssnyt
  • Pro Publica, a competitor of Spot.us (above) is a nonprofit group led by Paul Steiger, a former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, is being bankrolled by several major foundations to pursue investigative projects that it will then offer to newspapers and magazines.
  • Howard Dean model for politics...”Those campaigns revolutionized politics by using the power of the Web to raise small sums from vast numbers of people, making average citizens feel a part of the process in a way they had not felt before.
  • Advertising:  Poptent Lets Brands Crowdsource Advertising On The Cheap

     

     

 

 

Crowd-sourcing design

 

An interesting trend is for companies to tap the collective creativity / knowledge of a community to develop products.  This is not as crazy as it seems, and is actually resulting in quite profitable companies.  Please see our discussion on product development for more discussion...

 

 

 

Links to KookyPlan pages 

 

 

 

External Links:

 

From Wikipedia:

 

 

 

 

Books worth Reading:

 

  • “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business”, by Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Number of page visitors

 

 

Who visited recently?

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.

Printable version
 
Anonymous Create an account or Log in