Crowdsourcing
Because we here at i-merge have nothing against buzzwords, we don't mind supporting a new one. Only if it means something useful of course:
Like outsourcing, crowdsourcing is a model that depends on work being done outside the traditional company walls, but while outsourcing is typically performed by lower paid professionals, crowdsourcing relies on a combination of volunteers and low-paid amateurs who use their spare time to create content, solve problems, or even do corporate R&D. (source: wikipedia)
It's a very clever way to get things done, extremely cheap, relying on the crowd. I'll give some examples:
- Amazon Mechanical Turk co-ordinates the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do. I tried using the web service, but it seems it's only possible if you live in the US. Darn !
- Google image labeler: a simple game which google uses to make their image search more relevant.
- http://www.cambrianhouse.com/ (via mouseover)
- http://www.sellaband.com/ : (via mouseover)
Anyone other examples?
Comments
DdR mentioned two other examples in our own dutch article on mouseover) about crowdsourcing:
1. CambrianHouse
2. Sellaband
Thanks Nick !! I added them to the post.
Jesse Wynants asking at the Imerge blog for other examples of Crowdsourcing?
(ok, serious now, you'll find the example of "innocentive", outsourcing R&D to amateur researchers, in last year's Business Week article on "the wisdom of crowds": http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm , check slideshow.)
Oh, and in general, most forms of "user-generated content" are a way of crowdsourcing by media companies: they let people create content for free and sell the ad space. A publisher's wet dream.
Just came accross this post in my feedreader which describes a case in which a certain newspaper calls for their readers to help them with an investigation.