Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing
is the practice of obtaining needed services ideas or content by soliciting
contribution from a large group of people and especially from an online
community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Often used to
subdivide tedious work or to fund-raise startup companies and charities, this
process can occur both online and offline. The basic concept is to combine the
efforts of crowd of volunteers or part-time workers.
There are three types of
crowdsourcing
·
Crowd funding: In this type of crowdsourcing,
projects are funded by large group of people for example charities etc
·
Crowdsourced Design: In crowdsourced
designs projects are funded to design something. Like a web site, logo etc
·
Crowd wisdom: crowd wisdom is using the
wisdom and knowledge of crowd. It exist where users ask questions in front of
large group of people who are willing to answer like “yahoo answers”.
Uses of crowdsourcing:
·
Getting feedback. Crowdsourcing has
been proved best for simple tasks. For example it is a best option for web
designers and designers in general to get feedback on their work before making
it public. If you are hiring a designer and you don’t afford to hire a
professional than simply putting a competition on any crowdsourcing website can
be very helpful for talent hunting.
·
Catagorizing inventory products. If you are
starting a new shopping website than you can easily do crowd sourcing and get
your inventory categorized by paying few cents.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
Advantages:
·
It makes easier to collect the talent and knowledge of all the people in
crowd
·
It is a best tool to have understanding of audience and customers
·
Available in low price as compared to the price of hiring a professional
·
It’s a great opportunity that a large number of people always ready to work
for you anytime so real time reponse can be obtained
Disadvantages
·
As it is low cost there is a risk that work may also be less credible as
compare to professional work
·
Simple projects are easy to communicate as compare to complicated ones. So
the task which are above simple in nature may be risky to crowd source
·
There may arise the problem to manage a large number of workers may be
waste more time in managing people rather than solution
·
In some cases it may become difficult to collaborate between crowd members
·
Workers can delay or run anytime they want or your design may be re-soled
many times