Crowdsourced Crowdsourcing

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Comment by Ann Marie Shillito on April 9, 2009 at 6:53pm

Our Company, Anarkik3D has actually launched a ‘crowd sourcing’ initiative - on 11th December 2008 before I came across this group and joined it. The comments illustrate the wide range of perspectives there are as to what crowd sourcing might be. I see it as a generic term for a concept that is about communities collecting together around their different agendas. After investigating other ventures, we structured ours in as flexible way as possible around our needs as a company and the perceived needs of the like-minded people we wish to attract into a community. I see myself as one of that community and have used my knowledge and these two perspectives to form the hub of AnarkikAngels.
As we progress (it is currently very slow going) there will be issues, such as a bias moving/pushing away from the original motives, and how this is seen – favourably or not as the case might be!
As this is about ’crowdsourced crowdsourcing’ I would appreciate all comments. The website with current information is at www.anarkikangels.co.uk .

Comment by Ivan Pope on December 3, 2008 at 11:52am

Crowdsourcing company raises big money!

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/crowdsourcing-n.html

So, maybe it can be real:

Venture capital is drying up, with less money flowing in fewer deals, but at least one company managed to score a tidy sum. On Tuesday uTest -- which crowdsources software testing -- announced it had secured $5 million in Series B financing.

What makes the news remarkable is that uTest is a crowdsourcing company. Hype notwithstanding, crowdsourcing hasn't yielded more than a few viable businesses in the last few years. We know crowdsourcing exists because we've seen it flourish in the wild, which is to say, a few entrepreneurs have stumbled into very profitable businesses by building vibrant communities first, and monetizing them later.

Breeding crowdsourcing in captivity -- creating instant communities for the purpose of making a quick buch -- has proven far more difficult.

But I think it is safe to draw a few conclusions from uTest's success:

1. Coders Make a Great Crowd: Because crowdsourcing is built from the open source template, any company looking to leverage computer professionals has the advantage of an audience already familiar with the basic idea of community production. It's no accident that another crowdsourcing success story, TopCoder, has a similar business plan to uTest, though they build software as well as test it.
2. The Downturn Will Be a Boon to Crowdsourcing: A lot of crowdsourcing models offer cost savings. This promise has often turned out to be illusory, sometimes in comic proportions. But in an era of mass layoffs and draconian cost-cutting, the prospect of dramatically reducing overhead will be too tantalizing to resist. Companies that can actually deliver, as it seems uTest can, will reap the benefits.
3. Crowdsourcing is a Global Phenomenon: Most of the crowdsourcing companies I profiled in my book boast very cosmopolitan user bases, which is to say, less than half of their community members resided inside the United States. One of the comments on the TechCrunch post about uTest Tuesday was telling: "It was just too hard to compete with countries like India who organize groups to test the available products. This means that you as an individual have to be super quick to find the bugs before they do. It is just too stressful compared to the reward."

Comment by Ivan Pope on November 27, 2008 at 12:29am

I've been thinking about what crowdsourcing might and might not be. One thing that it might be is hinted at here. I'll do a post on things that cs might be, rather than what it appears to be, shortly:

Constructive feedback is necessary for both personal and professional growth, but is the annual review really enough? Launched earlier this month, Rypple is a web-based peer review tool that enables colleagues to give each other feedback on how they’re doing. Users register on the Canadian website, ask a question about their performance and select who to send the question to. Recipients quickly answer the question and fire it back.

Employees can use the system for specific concerns, for example the impact of a presentation, or for more general issues such as areas of performance to focus on in future. Questions can be tagged with keywords, helping monitor progress in specific areas over time. Rypple’s digital interface lets it foster open and honest responses that might not be given face to face: feedback can be given anonymously, only to be viewed by the person who requested it. Still in private beta, Rypple is currently free to use, with paid services likely to follow.

For offices that use it responsibly and accept criticisms made, Rypple provides a quick, on-demand method to help workers improve their performance. The system is also set up for use in classrooms, allowing lecturers to receive immediate and confidential feedback from students. For a broader look at how we’re moving ever closer to a fully informed marketplace and society, check out our sister-site trendwatching.com’s briefing on transparency tyranny and transparency triumph. (Related: Your very own focus group: personal image appraisals tell it like it is.)

Website: www.rypple.com
Contact: admin@rypple.com

Comment by Robbie Allen on November 13, 2008 at 7:49am

Ah well, not a crowdsourcing engine, but someone got there before me - http://www.maghribi.com/

Comment by Robbie Allen on November 13, 2008 at 7:43am

Thanks Ivan,

Sorting the methodology and working out rights issues arising is interesting way to go.

Some good references on Wikinomics, on Wiki (of course) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikinomics
and http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/

Especially like blog post by Dan Herman which includes the following-

'We may associate eBay with our modern definition of online reputation but the concept is perhaps earliest associated by archival records of trading between Maghribi merchants in the 11the century. Research on these early economic transactions show that the key to curtailing “opportunistic behaviour and promoting trust between agents” in an environment of high information asymmetry was a system of reputations that was developed and shared between the agents within a trading coalition or network.'

Suggested name for crowdsourcing engine - maghribi.com!

Comment by Ivan Pope on November 13, 2008 at 1:01am

Robbie,
I don't know anything about the rights side of it. I would imagine there are two approaches: rights issues inform methodology OR sort the methodology and then work out any rights issues arising. I looked at the Wikipedia entry on crowdsourcing, but no mention of rights.
Related issues were:
* Buzzwords
* Citizen science
* Clickworkers
* Collective intelligence
* Configuration system
* Crowdcasting
* Distributed Computing
* The Long Tail
* Mass Collaboration
* Mass Customization
* Open Innovation
* Social commerce
* Toolkits for User Innovation
* Tuangou
* Wikinomics
* Wisdom of Crowds

Comment by Robbie Allen on November 12, 2008 at 11:47pm

Ok I'm new to the concept of crowdsourcing, which does sound good in principal and I can see the potential opportunities and benefits in a lot of areas. I'm interested in the rights issues arising. Is there a good source of info that anyone can point me to or can anyone enlighten me?

Comment by Ivan Pope on November 11, 2008 at 7:32pm

I get the feeling that the quality of the crowd is key to crowdsourcing (alongside careful consideration of what you are crowdsourcing and how to ask the questions).
So, for this crowdsourced application I would propose we have tools to build and manage and communicate with the 'crowd'. In other words, rather than throwing projects on the mercy of generic crowds and hoping for the best, we build tools to allow access to interested and knowledgeable crowds that have expressed an interest.
No doubt this would also need some elements of chance or to allow new interested parties to take part.
What we are looking at is maybe piggybacking on existing communities - and building some tools to filter out bad players and trolls or the apathetic.
Maybe some form of profile building over time would allow the identification of a class of good crowd members.

Comment by Matt Johnston on November 10, 2008 at 4:32pm

I'm mixed on the value of Crowdsourcing - finding more often that the 'wisdom of crowds' tends to be submerged beneath 'mob stupidity'. The failure of Cambrian House and the way the term 'committee' is often viewed (as an impedence to progress) means there's a lot working against 'crowds'.

That said, brainstorming alone is very difficult.

I guess that it's where you take it. I think there should be more of a role for crowdsourcing of certain things but also recognising that it's not a panacea (as a couple of hundred thousand unfinished open source projects would attest).

Comment by Ivan Pope on November 7, 2008 at 10:07am

Dave, agree with you - I think it's important to separate 'crowdsourcing solutions' and 'crowdsourcing knowledge'. I would guess there is no barrier to creative crowdsourcing, but asking for specific design solutions and then choosing between them isn't my idea of progress.
Also agree that the community that you are asking is key to this - i.e. if there is an existing strong community around a subject there may be good potential for crowdsourcing solutions. If there is no community or a wide but shallow community, it may work less well.
But all of this needs to be tested out by building an engine and running it!

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