Crowd sourcing is another one of those metaphors adopted by the gurus of information technology that has some problems. While this metaphor isn't quite as bad as the cloud metaphor, it still misses the point. The primary problem is that, at least to my mind, the defining characteristic of a "crowd" is that they are not in direct communication with each other. For example, if you are part of a crowd watching a concert, you aren't communicating with the majority of the other people there. If you are part of the crowd watching American Idol, you don't communicate with the other millions of people watching at the same time.
However, you do communicate with a variety of communities. Perhaps you have friends at the concert and you might send them a text message. Or you might sit with a community of friends to watch the latest TV episode. It is communities--networks of friends, families, neighbors, business associates, etc -- that really come together on the web. And yes, these communities can be used to do work. When we built the logo for our new website, we used LogoTournament.com which harnesses a community of graphic designers to create logos. (We loved it by the way . . . if you hop over to our website, can you spot the subtle musical theme in the logo?)
But the reason that these sources work so well is because the people can communicate with each other--they are a community, not a crowd. If we called this trend "Community Sourcing" it would much more accurately represent what is going on, but since it doesn't sound as sexy, I doubt the gurus will adopt it.
Happy Anniversary, Green Shoots
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One year ago, on 60 Minutes, Ben Bernanke uttered that now famous phrase.
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6 hours ago
1 comments:
Hmmmm...main characteristic of a crowd is that they are "all in this together", not so much the lack-of-communication piece...at least for me. I "get" the thought that a big crowd starts collaborating on something but they HAVE to communicate somewhat so I follow your thought about it being a "community"...so much hairsplitting! I'll take the rap on that. I think the KEY characteristic of crowd sourcing that makes it somewhat interesting to observe is the incentive to act as a team or community...which begs the question how to drive that movtivation and sustain it to the completion of the task...that is where the real action-oriented value lies.
OK...so much for MY rambling on YOUR blog.
Love the new web site but it looks like you are devoting too much time to fine graphic art. ;-> I will say honestly that I am forwarding the site to one of the partners at my (new) employer...we are redoing our whole marketing scheme and web site. Thanks, Jim!
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