The term may seem foreign to you, but crowdsourcing is ever present in our day to day lives online. The idea is that you need to get a large amount of people to participate in a campaign for you, usually for free. Still seem foreign? Not so fast. If you've ever posted a video to Youtube, you've helped to be a part of their crowd. Youtube relies on the submissions of other people to build its database of videos and remain the go-to site for anything you could possibly be looking for. Youtube is one of my favorite sites to frequent for how to videos and my favorite, cat videos. (Yes, I have serious crazy cat lady potential!) Please feel free to enjoy my favorite cat video (that has gone viral almost 10 times over!).
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| This campaign for one of the Boston Marathon bombing victims went viral. |
everybody is happy. Crowdfunding can be a great way to get noticed, to reach out to total strangers, or to raise money from friends and family for little Timmy's upcoming marching band trip to Disney World.
Have you ever googled a question and come up with a long list of Yahoo! Answers results? Another example of crowdsourcing. This example, referred to as crowdwisdom, allows people to crowdsource their questions. They aren't just limited to asking mom and aunt Sally for advice anymore. Now they can reach the whole world in a few clicks and get many different opinions and even have other people vote on the best answer so that they don't have to decide for themselves. Crowdsourcing doesn't end at cat videos and fundraising, many websites rely solely on their crowd campaign participants as a means of revenue. Websites like Spoonflower, Etsy, iStockPhoto, and many others rely on the submissions of random strangers to fuel their databases. iStockPhoto is one of the main sources of stock photography on the internet.So far crowdsourcing seems pretty nifty, and it is. But so far we've only examined positive examples of crowdsourcing (which may be debatable, if you've ever asked a question on yahoo answers and had Joe Comedian respond...). The issue with crowdsourcing is that you cannot always guarantee quality of participants. Being an avid cat video watcher, there are some bad ones on Youtube. There are some really awful products on etsy. I've seen some fabric designs worth of a vinyl covered couch in my grandmothers on Spoonflower more than once. If you were to take crowdsourcing to a more serious level, things can get tricky. There is no guarantee of what you will get when you enlist the masses on a project. Crowdsourcing is a valuable tool when used carefully and wisely.
Have you ever participated in a crowdsourcing campaign? Did you know you were participating or are you just realizing it?
Resources
http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/19/pf/crowdfunding-boston-victims/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKffm2uI4dk
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/what-is-crowdsourcing/
http://socialmediaclub.org/blogs/from-the-clubhouse/social-media-and-crowdsourcing-cons
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/66891.html
Rachel, I enjoyed reading your post. Crowdsourcing was a foreign term to me before I read so many articles about it. I like your examples--You Tube is certainly a beneficiary of crowdsourcing. I will be presenting a program on the Roma of Europe and have found several good videos posted on You Tube to assist in the program. I am also using Pinterest to help in the making of the Roma program. I was surprised at the number of people interested in Roma and gypsies. Again, I had not thought of Pinterest as a form of crowdsourcing, but it is. The potential for businesses to connect with consumers is tremendous in Pinterest. Want to know what style women enjoy? Pin samples and track the re-pins.
ReplyDeleteYou discuss crowdfunding which was also new to me! That is a great idea for the cottage industry or the individual developer. Wish I had known about this for my cheerleaders as we fundraised for competitions. I researched a new product called the Sesame ring, and the two college students who designed the product used Kickstarter to raise money for their initial operating costs.
I have used Yahoo! Answers a few times. This example of crowdwisdom is perfect. It is interesting to see the various solutions or answers to my questions. As you said, the option to vote on the best answers is a good addition.
I agree that a few negatives are apparent in crowdsourcing. Quantity can be a problem as we do have to sift through the responses to find the relevant answers or choices. Quality can be a problem as we don't know what responses we will receive.
Even with the negatives, I think the potential for crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and crowdwisdom is there for more ways to be utilized. This is one of the elements I love about digital technology--it has uses we haven't yet thought of!