Crowdsourcing

The term "crowdsourcing" was coined in 2005 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, editor at Wired, to describe how businesses were using the Internet to "outsource work to the crowd". Howe, who first published a definition for the term crowdsourcing in a companion blog post, fist defined as:"Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers."

Crowdsourcing is “the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet”. Crowdsourcing can take place on many different levels and across various industries. People involved in crowdsourcing can work as paid freelancers who contribute their knowledge to bring innovation in a certain industry, or to help a certain cause. Others work on crowdsourcing on a voluntary basis, for instance, by reporting accidents through traffic apps to provide real-time information to app users. There are various platforms with online communities that enable to collectively contribute to ideas. For instance, GitHub, which is helping companies to work together by crowdsourcing software.

When and how to use crowdsourcing

1. Problem solving:

   Crowdsourcing allows to bring together the knowledge of hundreds or thousands of people to generate ideas or solve problems, and can be used to reduce the costs of businesses. Company logo designs can be crowdsourced for instance, but businesses tend to focus on more challenging issues, like air pollution, child labor, cleaning the world’s oceans...

2. Labor intensive tasks:

   Businesses can use crowdsourcing for labor intensive tasks. If a task - for example designing a website - needs to be done, a company can hire freelancers or publish a competition on a crowdsourcing site to get the design with an affordable price. Besides that, more than one person can work on that project at the same time, which means the project can be finished in a shorter period of time.

3. Content creation:

   The most common practice is sourcing the public for content creation. Wikipedia, Google, Facebook and Glassdoor do it, for example. Content which is created by a large group of people is often considered to be more trustworthy or reliable than a marketing content.

Types of crowdsourcing

1. Crowdwisdom:

   Crowdwisdom allows users to ask questions in front of a big online audience that can help answering these questions. An example for crowdwisdom is the website Yahoo Answers.

2. Crowdfunding:

   Crowdfunding gives people the opportunity to get fundings for a specific project by a large group of people. Everyone can publish a project for which he or she needs funding and other users can contribute to the projects by donating money. One example for crowdfunding is the website Kickstarter. Every kind of project can be published - from gadgets to movie projects.

3. Crowdsourced design:

   Crowdsoucred designs are projects that are founded by a large group of people to design something (for exmaple a website or an app). An example for a crowdsourced design is the "Rally Fighter car" - designed by a community.

Pros and Cons of crowdsourcing

Pros :+1:	Cons :-1:
Higher probability of success: digital crowdsourcing platforms make it possible that people are able to work on the project from anywhere and at any time of the day	Danger of manipulation: it is possible that competitors manipulate the project by giving wrong feedback
Saves time and money: people come together digitally	Danger of loss of image: if the product/project you are presenting to the people is only supposedly innovative
Marketing measure - Collect data and customers contacts: open projects can create attention from possible customers (advertisement) and companies can collect data from a target group	Danger of internal conflict: people who are responsible for a project should be integrated at all time, if not they could feel threatened
Access to resources: the user can advertise and sell their skills on platforms - allows more people to access a universally ashared set of resources	Cost of management: outsourcers have to deal with workers directly - might result in spending time and money on managing the resources effectively
Transparency - real world data: user reviews on services and products makes the transaction data more transparent - highly rated users can be rewarded and fake profiles can be pointed out easily	Quality control: people engage directly, therefore, safety and quality control can become an issue since it is easier to create a fake identity online than in real life

Sources: ispo.com and The Autsralian Bsuiness Review

How does crowdsourcing changes the user's role in knowledge generation

Crowdsourcing allows individuals to collectively contribute ideas, time and expertise to a project or cause. Each individual is involved in the creation of knowledge, and people contribute to something bigger than themselves, which gives them a high level of satisfaction. It becomes easier not only to access information online but also to contribute to it. Everyone with access to the Internet is able to have an impact on projects. With this ability, there is also resposibility. Crowdsourcing does not work if only a few people participate.

Example Person A speaks five lanugages fluently and helps other users to translate documents from one language into another. But person A does not know a lot about taxes and seeks for help online. Person B, who is an expert in that field, helps out person A. Either this is done for an amount of money or for free.

The manin conclusion is that you can both benefit from crwodsourcing and contribute to it if you can. Therefore, each individual's skills become important.