Milk the Masses

A recent interest for me has been the hotly discussed subject of Crowdsourcing. I have attempted to summarize much of the information concerning it here, but visit this website for more information.

Crowdsourcing is a neologism that is storming the corporate psyche in full force. For those unacquainted with the relatively new term, crowdsourcing simply defined, 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. It is a business model that is harnessing the think-power of crowds outside company walls. However, one thing that I really haven't understood correctly is the point at which crowdsourcing and commons-based peer production (CBPP, a term coined by Yale’s Law professor Yochai Benkler) diverge.

A few months ago, nobody had ever heard the term “crowdsourcing”. Now a simple Google search will zip you to over 400,000 returns dealing with crowdsourcing. The genesis of the term crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson in an article that was featured in the June 2006 issue of a digital-culture magazine WIRED. In the original article they explored case studies involving large, established companies, and they explained the methods by which they effectively mined and sorted through crowd created content. Jeff stated in his WIRED article that “sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D.”. He showed how companies across various markets were finding new ways of employing cheaper labor.

However, this idea was not entirely new to Jeff and Mark. James Surowiecki's “The Wisdom of the Crowd” was sited as a major reference in the development of the crowdsourcing model. The ideas presented in James’s book, have even deeper roots all the way back to the early Victorian era with Charles Mackay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. James argues that large groups of people are often smarter than the elite minds of the few, while Mackay disputes through historical reference that crowd-think does not always equate 1 + 1 to 2.

All of these ideas were incorporated into the current definition and model of what crowdsourcing is and how it is best applied. However, before we understand how we best apply crowdsourcing, we must first understand why so many people are willing to contribute in return for little or nothing.

CROWDSOURCING MINDSET

Lee Foster, a stock photographer affected by crowdsourcing, noted that “there is a huge desire by the public to become part of the media. People want to participate and not just receive their insight and information from the media.” There is a growing feeling of wanting to be connected to the global populace.

We see that more and more the valium of human contact is not limited to physical interactions, but can be had through virtual interactions via the internet. When we feel connected it is soothing, and in some ways it allows people to be valued by others all over the globe.

While this may seem too simple an explanation, I think it still drives home the major cause of free (or cheaply paid) crowd labor. This is evidenced in the fact that technology companies that have fed this desire to contribute have thrived! With the rise of websites such as YouTube, and Wikipedia, it is apparent that people are willing to contribute material for free. Recent technologies have made it easy to share media from the informal music sharing to formal business research techniques.

WHY CROWDSOURCE?

Where can you find a virtually infinite labor force that will work for less than they consciously know their worth? Could the costs associated with this labor force be cheaper than outsourced labor in India and China? The answer to these questions is found in Al Gore’s self-dubbed “creation”, the internet. The online world provides an almost infinite labor source, numerous skill sets, and lifetimes of experience.

What may take a company’s research team several weeks to problem solve, may take another person a few hours. Knowing this, the company allows anyone with an internet connection to perform the task they need completed in return for a rather miniscule reward. Of coarse most of the solutions received are useless; however, the crowd is so big that the businesses are finding exactly what they need despite the deplorable wages. The bottom line here is that crowdsourcing saves companies time and money.

I will continue my thoughts on this subject some other time... Needless to say if you want to check out more of this visit Jeff Howes Blog for heaps more of ideas from the originator.

Music:

I'm Not a Gun - Long Afternoon
If you thought you liked Explosions in the Sky (ever seen Friday Night Lights? Yea, that was them.), you will become absolutely infatuated with this song (like Ham & Tuna fish). The group is composed of Japanese guitarist 西本武 (Takeshi Nishimoto), and minimal techno DJ, John Tejada (true to the Detroit roots). The spacey rock guitar riffs and breakdowns really go hand in hand with the lovely beats that Tejada has spiced the track with.　本当にこれが凄いよ！今ダウンロードして