Crowdsourcing

“The Rise of the Amateur”Colonia Nova Theatre, Nov 13th, 2006

“The Rise of the Amateur”Like outsourcing, crowdsourcing is a model that depends on work being done outside the traditional company walls, but while outsourcing is typically performed by lower paid professionals, crowdsourcing relies on a combination of volunteers and low-paid amateurs who use their spare time to create content, solve problems, or even do corporate R&D. (source: Wikipedia)

Jeff Howe’s Rules of the New Labour Pool

1. The crowd is dispersed.2. The crowd has a short attention

span.3. The crowd is full of specialists.4. The crowd produces mostly crap.5. The crowd finds the best stuff.

Non-centralisation

• Crowdsourced labour is spread around the globe

• There is little or no hierarchy

• All work is done remotely

Little individual time adds up to a lot of total time

• Crowdsourcees do their work in tiny chunks, at their leisure

• Efficient break-up of the workload is required for a project to be completed

• Each “micro-chunk” might be negligible in terms of individual time (minutes to a few hours), but with thousands of collaborators, this adds up

The user is clever!• The principle behind crowdsourcing

is that the users of a product are often more clever/knowledgeable/professional/specialised than most of the employees of the company

• The company provides structure and overall organisation; the crowdsourcees provide the know-how

“90% of everything is crud”

• This rule is known as Sturgeon's Revelation and it applies to all creative work (and obviously also to crowdsourcing)

• Crowdsourcing does not increase the quality of the work produced

• A clever company will design filters to deal with all the junk and worthless work submitted

Let the users choose!• An effective alternative is to let the

users themselves select what works for them and what does not!

• Ratings and comments tend to point users to the things “most liked” (or sometimes even the “best” things)

• Companies can leverage on these methods to separate the wheat from the chaff

Outsourcing

CrowdsourcingIn-housedevelopment

Open Source

- closed- internal employees- fixed teams- inflexible management- high costs

- (usually) closed- external employees- teams can change on demand- more flexible mngmnt- less higher costs

- (usually) open but company keeps IP- no employees- no notion of a “team”- management is crucial- negligible costs

- open- no employees- directed development with team flexibility- no costs for devlpmnt

Questions for today

• Key features of crowdsourcing — what it is and what it isn’t

• Does this model work for every company?

• What is the cost of changing to crowdsourcing (in terms of corporate culture and financial costs)?

Web 2.0 and Crowdsourcing

• One could argue that all Web 2.0 sites (“the social Web”) are successful crowdsourcers — they provide the tools, the users provide all the content

• How to make money out of Web 2.0 content?

• How to pay crowdsourcees?

Web 3.0 and Crowdsourcing

• If the “metaverse” (Second Life?) is Web 3.0, it seems to show that it is all crowdsourcing — all users collaborate in the content production!

• SL shows a way where user-created content is profitable and has a place in the corporate business

• What is the role of the company producing the “metaverse” platform?

References• Jeff Howe’s blog at http://

www.crowdsourcing.com

• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

• Wired (and also several independent blogs)

• BusinessWeek (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jul2006/id20060713_755844.htm)

Thanks and acknowledgements

• To Poinky Malaprop and the Kuurian Expedition in Second Life, for organising the event

• To Jeff Howe for creating the concept and his presence here today

• To the Colonia Nova/CDS’s government for allowing this event to take place here