My experience with crowdsourcing is limited and pretty much non-existence prior to this week's readings. I've of course heard the terms used several times over the years and have heard the success stories of companies like Threadless. But, in wrapping up this week's videos and readings I did a bit of my own crowdsource reading. I came upon an interesting article which summarizes the best and worst aspects of crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing Challenges: by Lukas Biewald
Pros: It's like a free work force. Companies can successfully have others do their work and build brand awareness at the same time. Take Facebook for example who in redesigning their website to be user friendly in other languages did so by letting users vote and make changes to the site. Another example would be Reddit who allows user to flag, and have removed, inappropriate content. I know that sites such as Craiglist, Ebay, and Yelp use a similarly crowdsourced method of keeping their content relevant and "professional"
Cons: The cons to crowdsourcing are various. Perhaps the biggest con to crowdsourcing that I see is that if the content, site, or features of the website aren't built properly a company might end up with unintended results or results based on a user bias. This linked article mentions GalxayZoo which attempted to name galaxies by crowdsourcing the naming process. The scientist however discovered that users were more interested in naming clockwise galaxies and the results became somewhat skewed.
In addition to user bias I would image that user fatigue is something one needs to be conscious of when developing a crowdsourced campaign. It would seem that most crowdsourced activities need to be easy and clear to follow in order to get mass attention.
In all crowdsourcing is a great concept and if successfully managed and implemented can have great results for any size company.
Pros: It's like a free work force. Companies can successfully have others do their work and build brand awareness at the same time. Take Facebook for example who in redesigning their website to be user friendly in other languages did so by letting users vote and make changes to the site. Another example would be Reddit who allows user to flag, and have removed, inappropriate content. I know that sites such as Craiglist, Ebay, and Yelp use a similarly crowdsourced method of keeping their content relevant and "professional"
Cons: The cons to crowdsourcing are various. Perhaps the biggest con to crowdsourcing that I see is that if the content, site, or features of the website aren't built properly a company might end up with unintended results or results based on a user bias. This linked article mentions GalxayZoo which attempted to name galaxies by crowdsourcing the naming process. The scientist however discovered that users were more interested in naming clockwise galaxies and the results became somewhat skewed.
In addition to user bias I would image that user fatigue is something one needs to be conscious of when developing a crowdsourced campaign. It would seem that most crowdsourced activities need to be easy and clear to follow in order to get mass attention.
In all crowdsourcing is a great concept and if successfully managed and implemented can have great results for any size company.
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