Jack-O is Sick-O

Blegh! Looks like I caught the cold that is going around. Boo-urns to that! I tried to be good about washing my hands, but alas, I have come down with the nasty bug. Fever, runny nose, and my sinuses feel as if they are being pumped full of concrete.

Regardless, I chose to continue my thoughts (although admittedly many are just re-hashes of what Jeff Howe has written) on crowdsourcing here:


WHY NOT TO CROWDSOURCE?

Mark Harmel is a soft spoken stock photographer specializing in health care related photos. Lee Foster is also a professional photographer who specializes in photos of U.S. National Parks. While last year they were able to charge a competitive price of $150 a photo; amateurs have made the same thing available on the internet at $1.

The aftershocks of crowdsourcing are rolling in with hordes of motivated amateurs, and they are literally crowding out the professionals in certain fields. Stock photography is the epitome of how crowdsourcing is ferociously crowding out others. Another great example is journalism. The internet is swamped with reliable and legitimate news sources that are composed of people contributing their writings for free.

An additional problem is that crowdsourcing is like a radio which you have to finely tune in order to get a good signal-to-noise ratio. Jeff Howe in an ABC interview estimated that only “between 5% and 10% of what the crowd is actually creating will, in the end, be usable.” Think of it like a prospector hunched over in a knee deep river panning for gold. The time it takes to sift through the utter garbage to find the gold has a cost. Despite the fact that you receive content for free, it usually requires a lot of time to find the golden nugget.

Not only is it difficult to find what you are looking for, but it can often be difficult to implement the information you receive. Without a sound crowdsourcing model much of the good material that is gathered is wasted, because there is a lack of company protocol and infrastructure for implementing it.

SUCCESSFUL CROWDSOURCING STRATEGIES

Crowdsourcing is not as easy as putting a suggestion box on your website asking for good ideas. To achieve a successful model there are many inputs that must be considered before implementation. The tasks or questions must be focused. We all know that vague questions get vague answers. A clearly defined problem will help increase the signal-to-noise ratio allowing for more usable content.

Another way to tune out unnecessary static noise is to implement filters. One of the most popular crowdsourcing filters is (ironically) to use the crowd to filter itself. That means to let the crowd vote on which they think is the best out of all the submissions. This decreases the amount of time and money that is spent on moderation of the crowdsourcing task.

taps into a well of passion about a product that stretches beyond monetary incentives.” In order to truly succeed in a long-term Cash is king and people are always more eager to do something for which they receive payment. However, as said by Jessi Hempel in BusinessWeek “successful crowdsourcingcrowdsourcing projects you must be able to build the participants into an engaging social community.

Next blog we'll cover all the great examples of CS-ing (crowdsourcing, not to be confused with counter-striking . . . )

Music:

Ulrich Schnauss - Nobody's Home
This is a great chill tune that progressively builds up as it goes, and there is a nice little breakdown in the middle with some interesting sounds. Ulrich did a wonderful job with this track. Please give it a listen!