If you are not familiar with crowdsourcing, you need to be. Like so many trends, it’s a concept that’s grown out of our electronic lifestyles and is now being rapidly adopted by innovative businesses.
Crowdsourcing – What is it?Wikipedia™ defines crowdsourcing as “a neologism for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to a group (crowd) of people or community in the form of an open call.” (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing). Wikipedia credits Jeff Howe for coining the term in a June 2006 Wired Magazine article. However, the concept of sourcing information from a crowd is familiar to all of us, even if we don’t know the word for it. Think of all the news broadcasts that now feature cell-phone videos…of controversial arrests, storm damage, or the US Air plane being gracefully landed in the Hudson River.
It’s not just a local phenomenon, either. Bombings in Pakistan, election protests in Iran, the tsunami in Indonesia – many video images on the news shows came from quick-thinking witnesses who grabbed their cell phones and started shooting video. Another example of crowdsourcing is the Amber Alert™. When initiated these child-abduction bulletins are posted on highway electronic signs, over TV and radio, wireless devices and via service organizations.
Once, I was driving a freeway in California and saw an Amber Alert flashed on the LED board above me. A few hours later, the alert was called off because the kidnapper had been caught. It was one of the finest instances of crowdsourcing – and I didn’t even know what crowdsourcing was at the time. I simply knew that when the sign flashed above me, I took a mental note of the car and license plate that were being sought. So did every other driver on the highways, it seems, because the California Highway Patrol stopped the incident before it turned into a disaster.
Could the police have ended this situation as quickly or with such happy results on their own? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Think of the power of the search with the entire community working together to solve the problem. That’s the power of crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing as a Business Tool
Companies are starting to utilize crowdsourcing to help them evaluate and enter new markets, gain customer feedback (the new edition of the old ‘trial balloon’), and understand trends. For specific technology applications, take a look at the excellent article in PC Magazine at http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=crowdsourcing&i=57732,00.asp.
You can also check out a summary report on the LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association) website (http://www.lisa.org/Crowdsourcing.1280.0.html).
LISA states that Facebook® was able to go from 0 to 16 localized versions of its website in under 6 months, and is now at 60 and rising – thanks to crowdsourcing. People in these 60+ locations were willing to translate content for free, for whatever reason.
Crowdsourcing Caveats.
The old saying “you get what you pay for” applies in capital letters to crowdsourcing. When you receive random input from random sources, it has to be verified, checked and re-checked again. It may be solid gold, or solid junk. Some companies will toss the idea of crowdsourcing as just a consumer tool or a fad. It’s both right now, but it is also a tool that taps into the power of people to give their opinion on topics that interest them.
And the web lets the feedback be immediate and even blunt, because people type messages in distractive environments, like the airport, or in a Starbucks line, or a restaurant while waiting to meet someone.
You will need your traditional professionals in marketing, research, operations, etc, to filter through information and interpret it for best results, but crowdsourcing provides the potential for massive input that may otherwise go lacking. Many times, I receive an email request from a company to take a survey. The query hits the in-box over and over again, indicating that the surveying firm cannot reach their quota of answers for a reliable sample. Crowdsourcing can avoid that cycle.
Like any new web tool, you need to tread cautiously to start. But the best time to learn this new medium is -- now! – when everyone else is learning it and experimenting. New marketing methods are tried and repeated before they become common practice. That means you have time to make mistakes and refine your processes. Then you can be ready to implement larger-scale programs when the time comes. Even if crowdsourcing is a fad, you can bet that it’s simply a precursor to something else that will leverage pieces of crowdsourcing skills, giving you a leg up on your competitors for fast implementation.
Like a 49er miner, you can sift through the dirt and come up with, well, dirt, or you can hit gold. There’s no guarantee either way, but those who struck gold weren’t sitting on the shores of the river. They had their picks in the mud.
The above comments are the personal opinions of Barbara Kalkis, Maestro Marketing & PR(sm). -ends-
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