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Crowdsourcing II: 10 Interesting and Varied Crowdsourcing Examples — 18 Comments

  1. I think you should add Alegion to your list, a platform that allows customers to automate crowd labor distribution of work and assuring the quality of the work.

  2. Insightful review.
    You really come up with the ideal resources and Crowdsourcing II: 10 Interesting and Varied Crowdsourcing Examples | Lifes Too Good is certainly
    no exception to this rule!

    My weblog; web design Cape Town (Halina)

  3. There are some great crowdsourcing examples here, but I’m disappointed to see 99Designs. The definition of crowdsourcing is (paraphrasing from Wikipedia), “… obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people …”. The intention being that the crowd ALL contribute to an end result with mutual satisfaction. 99Designs and their ilk took this and twisted it, creating a warped version where many contribute, but only one is satisfied. There is a distinct difference between crowdsourcing and spec work, with 99Designs being the latter.

    • Hi Steve,

      it’s an interesting point but if the result isn’t technically outsourced because it’s only coming from one chosen individual (‘the winner’) then surely the choice of design (coming from many individuals, i.e. the ‘crowd’) definitely is?

      the impression I got looking at the wikipedia page is that crowdsourcing is a fairly new phenomenon, quite loosely defined and above all there are many different types, ‘inducement prize contests’ being one of them – I’m happy to be corrected though. The other thing wikipedia mentions which I find interesting is that although calling it crowdsourcing is fairly recent, the concept has actually been around for ages…

      • Hi Alan

        No, the choice of design lies with the person/company commissioning it. The crowd have no part in the decision making. Sounds great for the commissioner, but there are many problems with getting cheap design this way. It’s not only the design world where this is happening either. It’s a great way to lower standards and have a negative effect on worth.

        Crowdsourcing as a concept has been around for a while and yes, the definition is loose, but the ‘inducement prize contest’ is still a perversion of what it was supposed to be.

        • Hi Steve,

          I get your point, but when I said choice, I meant the client is still getting a number of different options to choose from – i.e. from the crowd.

          Maybe at some point someone will tighten up the terminology and have a different term for things that are ‘truly’ crowdsourced from initiation to completion and things that are only crowdsourced for certain stages of a process…

          You touch on a wider point – that of quality: I’d say in a lot of instances, not just design work the quality has a completely different dynamic between any given task that is crowdsourced and the same task not being so. Take a look at the average job done on Mechanical Turk.

          There are perhaps certain types of work well suited to crowdsourcing where the overall quality is increased but I’d say on the whole, where the return on investment is bigger, the overall quality in absolute terms is generally worse than a more specialist approach.

          i.e. even with the emergence of sites such as 99Designs, there is still plenty of room for specialists to provide quality solutions direct to the consumer (such as yourself presumably) – they’re just different business models at the end of the day, that’s all…

  4. What a comprehensive list. Out of all of these, I’m only familiar with Amazon Mechanical Turk. Well, I also know of another site called Quirky which uses crowdsourcing. Users sign up and submit designs of things they’ve invented. The community of users look at the designs and vote on which ones they like most. When an idea gets enough votes behind it, the company (Quirky) manufactures and sells it. The person who invented it gets a percentage of the money made off the product. Sounds like a pretty good deal for those who get a lot of innovative ideas.

    It’s kind of crazy how many of these sites are out there. Makes me wonder how far crowdsourcing will go. I guess we’ll have to wait and see where the future will take it.

    • Yes, and I could easily double it!!

      I just heard yesterday for example of another crowdsourcing site which helps people who might need a voiceover (for a presentation, an audiobook, a ‘jingle’, a podcast…) – it’s a site called voice123.com. I don’t need that at the moment but it sounds pretty cool too – along the lines of 99designs but for voice talent.

      It’s a fascinating subject.

      I’ll have a look at Quirky (I like the name already 😉 … in fact that is a very interesting ‘gap’ to go for, I know of plenty of people who think that having a good business idea is all it takes and of course it’s not – there are also two huge areas in getting that idea into reality (production) and marketing that idea – looks like Quirky adds the 2nd and possibly a little bit of the third (?) … I’ll take a look – sounds interesting anyway.

      Have you had any quirky ideas yet?

    • Hey Tal,

      thanks for stopping by & for the comment – I am loving finding out about crowdsourcing – like you I already knew a bit about it but the ‘mix’ of stuff out there is interesting not just in terms of what’s there but in terms of how they’re doing & some of the challenges (which I hadn’t quite fully appreciated),

      best wishes for 2013 – I’m looking forward to seeing what you get up to…

      Alan

  5. Alan,
    Love this comprehensive list. I’ve heard of 99designs and kick-starter and a few others but the majority i had not heard of. I liked the ponoko one the best too just because it’s so different than the rest.

    My husband is looking into hiring a designer for his book cover from 99designs. They are my second favourite in your list.

    • Yep, there are a few companies that definitely seem to have gotten it right and I’d say 99Designs and Kickstarter are right up there. Ponoko is my favorite too in concept though I don’t know how robust their service is – I plan to investigate further because it sounds pretty awesome.

      I don’t think it’s going to be too long in the future when people start having 3D printers in their houses and making all kinds of things for themselves via software you would currently buy…

  6. This was very interesting. I tried a crowdsourcing contest to make a video for an EC website; I described the process here: http://bit.ly/Us73hB
    But it’s not a site of the type you’re describing here, but is nonetheless a little example of what one can get out of this kind of approach.
    carry on!

    • Thanks Curt,

      I’ll take a look at your article when I get a moment. Glad you found this one interesting – I find the subject rather fascinating…

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