People Powered Buzzword Du Jour: Crowdsourcing
from the amateur-to-amateur-to-professional dept
Over the last few years, as people have recognized the power of the internet as a communications platform rather than a broadcasting platform, different people have come up with different ideas to express the new business models this allows. This has ranged from the joke that Web 2.0 is made of people to the more scholarly work of Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter about how "amateur to amateur" changes the way we think about content creation, promotion and consumption. It looks like Wired Magazine is now taking a stab at naming the phenomenon as well, describing the concept of "crowdsourcing." Basically it's not that different than the digital working class concept we discussed last week, but with a catchy name. While jumping on the buzzword bandwagon doesn't always make sense, there are important ideas to consider across all of these discussions. It's the basic recognition of how the internet has enabled new forms of production that simply weren't possible before. It then raises two issues: how does that challenge existing ways of doing business and what types of companies spring up to take advantage of the new possibilities. We've seen plenty of examples recently of how, especially within the entertainment industry, the traditional business has dealt with these concepts by fighting the inevitable trends. However, it's encouraging to see one of the examples in the Wired story is a program set up by Eli Lilly to encourage anyone to help companies tackle problems they're having, in exchange for a reward. It's a case where companies are recognizing that sometimes a fresh perspective is quite valuable, rather than assuming that they need to somehow protect their traditional way of doing business. Unfortunately, as with many buzzwords, expect to start seeing lots of new business models that talk up how they're leveraging "crowdsourcing" when the truth will be that very few are actually doing so.
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HA
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Re: HA
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Crowdsourcing?
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For shame...
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Crowdsourcing!
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YES!!!
SOMEONE SEND ME MONEY
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Businesses should value their customers more!
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Buzztronic CorpSpeak
of mind items into a fully baked chinese menu. Results should provide
the much needed green field for our new uber-widget-x
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Encouraging?
"Sorry Bob, but a kid in Acron volunteered to do that entire project for $20. As such, we decided to let you go. But hey, you should be happy for us. Profits are at all time highs..."
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Commodization of Labor is a Good Thing
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sources
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sources
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sources
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Been there before
As the available content grows to infinity, the value is no longer in providing access to the content, but in filtering the content to just the items of value. Witness the fall of Yahoo and the rise of Google. There are lots of photos of flowers. There are lots of freely available photos of flowers. Being able to go to a professional stock photo catalog and look at exclusively _excellent_ phtos of flowers has real cash value to anybody whose time isn't infinite.
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Well, I do skateboard...
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Crapsaucetasticmania!
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hmm
Why does it take a fucking Wired article for people to remember old concepts like The Delphi effect [Wikipedia]. It's not like some businessman who's very interested in making money would not consider such concepts - Identification of this concept was done back in 70s for god sakes.
The title is correct in assuming this 'trending' is more about hatching new buzzwords than about getting work done,doing things better, or making more money (as a result of making a better product or service).
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crowdsoucing and www.istockphoto.com et al
The downside of people consuming poor quality content at a low price over a long period of time is clear for all to see in the streets and malls of this country. It is however what people want, and they show no signs of altering their behavior even with the health risks involved.
Fortunately digital imagery and video produced by everyone
will probably not give you a heart attack or diabetes, although
it may make finding a competent photographer or videographer
a lot harder in the future.
After all, who will spend time and money to train for a job that pays nothing, to produce great images for consumers that can no longer recognise the difference. Or care.
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crowdsourcing and a further thought
but the workers who compete in photography have little overhead and
are willing to absorb most of the costs of production for very little return.
It is a reality of the the photography industry that many people will enter it, burn through their friends/family's support for about 18 months, and then return home to work at dad's car dealership/factory in Ohio/Washington. To be replaced of course by a new bunch willing to work for a credit-line and the chance to make it,
until in 99% of the cases they make a similar trip back to Ohio/Washington.
The only people to make money out of this iteration of crowdsourcing are those able to algomerate the work of
people willing to work for little, and take a percentage off the top.
Taking 75% of each $1 download produced by 20,000,000 eager photographers is going to be the only way to make money
in the stock photography business of the future.
It may also be the only way to make money in the industry you
are in, dear reader.
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new crowdsourcing project
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