2009-03-31 Crowdsourcing explained
From Walkerpedia
This was originally sent to my email subscribers as part of my Tuesday emails series.
Hello people. Welcome to your Tuesday lunchtime ramble through the footpaths and bridleways of the social media landscape. For those of you who are joining us for the first time (and there are quite a few new faces!), hello. Say hello, everyone. Today we're talking about crowdsourcing...
Crowdsourcing is a combination of outsourcing and crowdsurfing - a way of efficiently getting stuff done while being metaphorically carried on the raised hands of your adoring network.
Contents |
Really?
Actually, crowdsourcing is just networking with a new name. Digital communication has allowed for networks that are so large that they approximate crowds, but when you hear someone say they are crowdsourcing something ("I'm just popping out to crowdsource some milk. Want anything?", for example) they are just doing what the eighties would call "tapping into the latent potential of their network".
Not content just to marvel at the wonders of crowdsourcing that are already going on, I have been crowdsourcing some stuff myself. With mixed results.
Crowdsourcing an editor
I needed some promotional text about myself for the concert programme and website. You may not believe it, but I'm not good at talking myself up. So I wrote a couple of hundred words of heavily qualified, arrogance-dressed-as-humour copy to kick things off.
I uploaded it to a wiki (a publicly editable web page, like Wikipedia), and announced on Twitter that I was crowdsourcing editors. The take-up wasn't huge. Two people read it and told me it was great already.
But then someone I had never heard of made a few changes, and sent me a message on Twitter. The changes were good. She promised to do some more the next day, which she did. And the editing was done. The copy went up on the North Wall website the next day.
Crowdsourcing a copywriter
I needed to write a press release. My dad offered to give me two hours of his copywriter's time to write it for me. Which she did.
You might think that's not the best example of crowdsourcing, but in a way it's the simplest example. Everything else is numbers. It turns out my dad is a crowd of one.
Of course, if I were spinning the story to the press I would mention how I recommended the copywriter to my dad after meeting her brother in a flat above a London pub after a Jont gig three years ago.
How about crowdsourcing a crowd?
I spent half an hour trying to buy train tickets online last night, and I'm a techno-nerd. I know how annoying it can be buying tickets on the web.
So I've created a special super-easy ticket buying web page just for you, Ben. May 1st is creeping up on us (just over a month now!), and I wouldn't want you to be queueing outside on the night, straining to hear the beautiful sounds wafting out of the sold-out theatre, and drifting away through the spring air...
http://tinyurl.com/bbg-tickets
What do you want to know about next time?
There are only a few Tuesdays left before Ben's Big Gig, so if there's an internet thing you don't get, or a social media wotsit that's confusing you, let me know and I'll cover it in one of the last few emails. Just hit reply and drop me a one-liner. ;)
Talk soon,
Ben
PS. For those of you who know (or know of) the Volvo, it's going to scrap today. A minute's silence would be appropriate. And if anyone knows how to carry a piano on a bike, let me know!
PPS. If you're new, you might not have seen the Ben's Big Gig website, which will make things a little clearer:
