Crowdsourcing



__**Definition**__

Crowdsourcing is a means for businesses, or persons in need of a particular service to connect with a group or open network of potential candidates to outsource a job. By contrast to a more traditional long term employment, crowd sourcing usually requires only a brief service but may evolve to longer employment. Its strength lies in that vast assortments of people across multiple regions have the potential to be reached for service opportunity, as oppose to an isolated select few. Additionally, crowdsourcing allows for greater work efficiency because of its user generated feedback. The feed back is not only generated from candidate reputation of services, but on site locations as well. The on site feedback saves businesses time and money because it saves them the hassle of hiring someone to patrol a location in search of service. Also, much less time and money is spent on services that would usually require surveys. The open call format for which crowdsourcing works is not limited to one person completing the process, but can and often will involve multiple people.

__**Early** **History**__

Crowdsourcing has been around since at least the late 1800s, when Professor James Murray lead a project to assemble the Oxford English Dictionary by taking open submissions from thousands of volunteers to compile a dictionary of the English language. Over the course of 70 years, he accepted submissions from countless writers and volunteers from around the country, and together they developed one of the greatest collections of the English Language on earth using a technique made common knowledge some 200 years later.

Crowdsourcing also contributed to the efforts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to create a genealogical record of all their members in an attempt to encourage recording of such information. In 1965, they created the Three-Generation Program, in which they would encourage all of the members to submit information about their generation, their parents, and their grandparents. Today it provides a rich resource to thousands of members of the Church who wish to learn about their family line.

__**How Its** **Used Today**__

Companies have used crowdsourcing for many years in an effort to minimize costs regarding transportation, data collection, and surveying, etc. Instead of using capital to hire employees to go to a site and collect information, business owners can use crowdsourcing to outsource the job to whoever is nearest and most conveniently situated to accomplish the task. For example, rather than hiring a new employee to search streets for potholes or other traffic obstacles, a construction company can leave it to users to encounter those obstacles and deliver information directly to the company in order to streamline the servicing process.



The competition of a group allows a collective to converge on the best possible solution to solving any given problem.

-OR-

The competition of a group allows a single individual to arrive at the best possible solution at the most competitive service offer.

__**Companies That Use** **It**__

1. http://www.kluster.com/

Perfect for brainstorming ideas from trusted people, kluster allows you to harness and manage your hand-picked crowd. In addition, kluster supports group decision-making by capturing weighted feedback from participants.

2. http://www.ponoko.com/

 Ponoko allows shoppers and conceptual product designers to bring their ideas to life, however random they may be. they make it easier to make things. they also hope to download products from the Internet and make them locally. To sum it up, they can make, share, sell, and buy.

3. http://www.redesignme.com/

 This innovative website hooks up companies with creative thinkers to develop new product / service concepts. they help you create effective online conversations. They supply the knowledge and the tecchnology to setup community platforms for market research, innovation,or customer research.