1. +
Crowdsourcing
Katie Allred

2. +
What is crowdsourcing?
 Crowd + Outsourcing
 Merriam-Webster:
 the practice of obtaining
needed services, ideas, or
content by soliciting
contributions from a large
group of people and
especially from the online
community rather than
from traditional employees
or suppliers

3. +
Crowdsourcing
a video definition

4. +
Crowdsourcing, a Brief History
 The term, “crowdsourcing” was
created when Jeff Howe and
Mark Robinson, both of Wired
Magazine, had a conversation
about how businesses were
using the internet to outsource
work to individuals.
Howe later defined crowdsourcing
by stating:
"Simply defined, crowdsourcing
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. This can
take the form of peer-production
(when the job is performed
collaboratively), but is also often
undertaken by sole individuals. The
crucial prerequisite is the use of the
open call format and the large
network of potential laborers.”

5. +
Types of Crowdsourcing
according to Brabham
1. Knowledge discovery and
management
2. Broadcast search
3. Peer-vetted creative production
4. Distributed human intelligence tasking

6. +
Types of Crowdsourcing
according to Crowdsourcing for Dummies
1. Crowdcontests
2. Macrotasks
3. Microtasks
4. Crowdfunding
5. Self-organized crowds

7. +
Crowdcontests
 Enable you to identify the
best worker for your job
 A single job description that
asks for one item
 Many people proposing or
creating item
 Only pay one person
 Graphic design
 Answering questions
 Testing software
 Creating films
 Other creative projects
Features Usage
Information from Dummies.com

8. +
Macrotasks
 Enable you to get a
specific skill for a job or
project
 Hire worker from crowd
for single task
 Communicate over the
Internet
 Worker paid by task
 General business work
 Web design and other
forms of design
 Assistance with writing
and editing
 Application
development
Features Usage
Information from Dummies.com

9. +
Microtasks
 Enable you to use human
intelligence on
large, complicated jobs
 Divide big jobs into small
units
 Put units on the Internet
 Let members of crowd do
tasks
 All workers get paid
 Transcribe business
cards, medical records
and other documents
 Tag photos and handle
non-textual data
 Find business
information
Features Usage
Information from Dummies.com

10. +
Crowdfunding
 Engage social networks to
raise money
 Put a request for funds on
an Internet platform
 Create messages and
videos to promote request
 Recruit crowd to donate
money
 Offer crowd gift or benefit
 Support non-profit
organisations
 Raise funds for artistic
endeavours
 Get cash for companies
by offering goods or
services
 Raise equity for company
(under the right
circumstances)
Features Usage
Information from Dummies.com

11. +
Self-organized Crowds
 Post a challenge on the Internet
 Recruit crowd to work on
challenge
 Crowd organizes itself into a
team
 Teams compete to provide best
answer for challenge
 Winning team compensated
 Team decides how to divide
compensation
 Innovation – creating new
products or services
 Finding and collecting
information
 Processing information
and offering judgement
 Solving challenges
Features Usage
Information from Dummies.com

12. +
Benefits of Crowdsourcing
 Benefits to Companies
 Problems can be explored at
comparatively little cost.
 Payment is by results.
 The organization can tap a
wider range of talent than
might be present in its own
organization
 Turn customers into
designers
 Turn customers into
marketers
 Low Cost
 Large quantity of
diverse professionals
 Large quantity of ideas
 No travel cost/time

13. +
Problems with Crowdsourcing
 The crowd is not a part
of your business
 You are not able to fully
control
 Trust and confidentiality
 Quality
 No time constraint
 Not much control over
development or
ultimate product
 Ill-will with own
employees
 Choosing what to
crowdsource & what to
keep in-house

14. +
Six Steps to Successful
Crowdsourcing
1. Design the job and divide the labor.
2. Write clear instructions.
3. Choose a web platform to serve as your
crowdmarket.
4. Release the job and recruit the crowd.
5. Listen to the crowd and manage the job.
6. Assemble the work of the crowd and create the
final product.

15. +
Examples of Crowdsourcing
 Firefox or any open software
 Shutterstock.com
 General information
 Crowdsourcing.org
 Daily Crowdsource
 Crowdcontest sites
 99 Designs
 DesignCrowd.com
 Freelancer.com
 General macrotasking
 oDesk
 Elance
 TaskRabbit
 General microtaking
 Mechanical Turk
 CrowdFlower
 Tagasauris
 Crowdfunding sites:
Kickstarter, When You
Wish, Indiegogo
 Self-organized crowd sites for
innovation:
Chaordix, InnoCentive

16. +
Boston Marathon: Crowdsourcing
Data to find the bomber
 Short Video
 Pros
 Large amounts of data
 Much faster
 Cons
 So much data to organize
 “Internet detective” – blaming the wrong guy

17. +
The Crowdsourcing
Evolution
video