Lets All Do The Crowdsource
Have you heard of the new dance craze that all the kids are doing? Its call the Crowdsource, and it goes like this:
- Throw your hands in the air and scream “Man! We are super busy!”
- Shake your head and yell “Have you heard of the craze sweeping the nation? Its called the Crowdsource. The Crowdsource!”
- Shrug your shoulders and exclaim “Its cool. You get everyone else to do your work for you!”
- Then you clap your hands, smile and with a knowing, hip smile, laughingly announce “Lets do this!”
- Repeat until you realize that you are a moron and have no clue what crowdsourcing is.
In 2006, Jeff Howe coined the term in a Wired article. Referring to the practice of presenting a problem to an unknown group of people in the form of an open call. To be exact, on his blog he defines it as such:
Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
Jeff wrote “the” book on crowdsourcing and among other positives, crowdsourcing problems tends to be free and give real customer insight.
Those two points: insight and lack of cost have led so many companies to attempt to use the “wisdom of the crowds” to solve their problems. For some, like Threadless, it has been a wonderful success. For others, not so much.
One of the outcomes of the rise of crowdsourcing has been the proliferation of spec work (here is the video from a panel about Spec Work from SXSW 2009):
What seems to be missing from the conversation is that not any problem can be solved through crowdsourcing. For example, a friend sent out a tweet that said (paraphrasing): “I want to crowdsource this. What blogs do you read?” Thats not crowdsourcing, thats a survey.
I realize that for many crowdsourcing has jumped the shark, and this post is a bit late to jumping on the crowdsourcing has jumped the shark bandwagon (after all bandwagon jumping has also jumped the shark, and I believe if you look into your heart of hearts, jumping the shark has jumped the shark as well).
But, crowdsourcing, using your passionate users to make a product that they can be more passionate about is still pure genius. Here is a great example.
I bought a TomTom 740 Go Live and instantly was amazed by the accuracy of the trips. I had a Garmin Nuvi 1490 for a few days prior to swapping it for the TomTom, and I was really disappointed in the traffic and the directions. I have a specific route from San Francisco to my parents house in San Jose that after years and years of driving the route, I have determined to be the fastest.
The Garmin took the safe route. The TomTom took the “right” route. What was the difference? TomTom crowdsources its maps and directions.
Taking data from all the TomTom’s in use (sort of), they get the actual speeds of roads at certain times, versus the posted speeds. They also allow their users to submit map updates. In approximately 30 days, there were more than 6,500 updates to the maps. Include that with custom POI updates (I now have all the Apple Stores in the US), and you have a product made better by its users.
Thats crowdsourcing in a nutshell. Will asking your customers to solve a problem improve the product? Will you be able to put out a better product because your crowd (not any crowd) is involved in its growth?
You see, thats the secret of crowdsourcing. Effective crowdsourcing only works if 1) your community is passionate about your success; and 2) you have an existing open dialogue with your community. Threadless is a great example.
Build passion and communication with your community, and the ability to effectively crowdsource the solutions to important problems will be as easy as the box step.
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Isn't what you're talking about in the Tom Tom case more akin to “crowd data collection services”, though, Micah? When I think of crowdsourcing, I think of tapping into the knowledge, experience and analysis of individuals en masse. In other words, making the brains of the crowd part of the data set, rather than just their experience. Or am I off on this one, which is entirely possible. I mean, that jumped shark had to end up somewhere…
Love the post Micah, but don't necessarily agree on the wisdom of a crowd, unless the crowd is made up of not just passionate users, but also predominantly wise ones.
The proverbial lemmings are a crowd – not a wise one. As you put it? The wisdom is in broadening your pool of intellectual resources. It takes someone wise enough at the helm to say “yes, this is a good solution/idea/map” or equally no, in order to make the idea useful.
I would posit that for every Threadless, you also have an example where the community has been overrun by either the clueless or the scurrilous. The front page of Digg is a good example of a community that used to be passionate and informative a is now passionate but not as informative.
Oh, and yeah, I get sick of hearing “crowdsource” as a substitute for “tricking someone else into doing the work for us for free!” ick.
I found this article helpful.
http://mashable.com/2009/09/02/attract-your-crowd/
It mentioned another concept that can be lumped in with crowdsourcing, but is really more akin to community management. You encourage participation in order to foster a sense of community. The end result may or may not be the most creative option, but by encouraging people to contribute, you allow them to feel more a part of the process. They gain a sense of ownership as a result. I've been trying to put together a list of procedures that would result in the most satisfaction with the least disruption. People don't contribute equally and their contributions aren't equally valuable, so it's tricky to generate a project that fulfills the needs of everyone under those circumstances.
The definition of crowdsourcing is using “a crowd” (usually unpaid) to solve a problem. In TomTom's case its keeping its maps up to date. Its a classic usage of crowdsourcing. Your perception is where crowdsourcing has gotten off the rails.
The idea is that if you take a bunch of folks and throw them at a problem, the outcome will correct for the outliers and the folks trying to game/break the system. But, at its basis, its allowing a group of people (usually a large group of people) help solve a problem.
Take Threadless, usually used as the poster child for crowdsourcing. They are using a group of people to come up with the “best” tshirt designs (read most sellable). Then Threadless selects from the group of “best” tshirt designs and prints those. This is much different than CrowdSpring, which is not traditional crowdsourcing, but rather a contest. With Crowdspring, the “crowd” competes against itself to come up with a single design selected by the crowdspring user. In the traditional sense, it is not crowdsourcing.
I think that you are missing the point…slightly. The idea is that if the crowd is large enough, and they are focused on improving the product and/or company, then the “wisdom” is derived from that size. Its not about the “right” decision; its about the “right” decision for the community.
With Threadless, its about what designs would the community buy if they were on a tshirt. With TomTom its about the accuracy of their maps and the additional information (POI) than enhance those maps.
The key to crowdsourcing is that its the community improving the community. I would argue that Digg lost its community a long time ago. That it became less about improving the community and more about individual gain. That the community at large was no longer a cohesive unit focused on the improvement of Digg as a whole.
Wisdom, is often in the eye of the beholder, and if a company allows their community to drive their direction they may make conventional unwise decisions, but market smart ones.
Brandon is one smart dude. I like much of his writing.
Remember crowdsourcing is about problem solving. Community management is about fostering the community so that when you need to turn to them to help solve a problem, they will be ready and willing to help.
Thats the trick. Creating an environment where your community is passionate and where a open line of communication exists is paramount to successfully utilizing crowdsourcing as problem solving tool.
Passion isnt inherent nor can it spontaneously appear. It comes from exactly what you wrote: a sense of belonging, and understanding that each person has a real effect on the future of the business. Its non-competitive. Its open communication.
One of the problems with some crowdsourcing experiments is that they encourage competition. If you ask for lots of submissions, and then have the winner determined by either a vote or by having a client pick, then each submitter is acting on his/her own.
I've seen mostly bad results when music contests are held like this. A company will invite bands to submit a song, then open it up to fan voting, and then reward the winner some sort of prize — generally money and/or the opportunity to have the song used in a commercial. Rarely is the best song/band found this way. The winner is usually someone who has lots of fans who have the time to vote. It's like Battle of the Bands contest. It's not really about finding the best band/music. It's simply a promotional device to get lots of people to come to a venue or visit a website.
I guess what I am really saying is that crowdsourcing can either be used to encourage competition, in hopes the best idea will arise, or it can be used to encourage community, in hopes that the best solution for the group will arise.
Thats not crowdsourcing, thats a contest. Again, crowdsourcing is solving a
problem by asking the crowd to come up with a solution or a number of
solutions for no reward.
Thats the major issue. People are calling things crowdsourcing that are not
crowdsourcing.
Any site that offers projects and allows anyone to submit and then awards one person the project is run like a competition of sorts. That's what crowdsourcing means to some people.
Threadless runs along those lines, yes? Don't people vote on the designs they like best?
“Over a period of 7 days, the Threadless community will score and comment on your submission. These scores and comments will help us decide which designs should become the next Threadless tees!”
That's how the band/song competitions are run. Submit and let people vote. So it is a competition in that there are some that are chosen and some that are not. With music, often the bands that can rally the most votes are not necessarily the best or even have the most commercial potential. They just happen to have enough fans who have the time and willingness to vote. It's a popularity contest more than a determination of quality.
The way threadless works is that designs are voted on, then a collection of
the highest scoring designs are reviewed for selection. There is no winner,
per se. The crowd helps select, they are not the final selection.
Dave, what you are describing could fall into a new category, collaborative crowdsourcing, with your example on one end, and Tom Tom in the middle and SETI on the other end, pure crowdsourced data. Its all in the definition.
oh, and spec work is not crowdsourcing, it is more accurately described as gambling.
But each designer is submitting as an individual. It's not a collaborative process. That's why I say this model is more competitive than community building. The community as a whole may choose, but the ideas are from individuals and they are recognized as individual creators.
Wikipedia would be more of a collaborative model, where a variety of people add bits and pieces to create a more fully developed whole.
The “mass collaboration” (a component of the definition) comes from the voting side, not the submission side. Well, thats not entirely true. They have a critique section, where people can submit designs and get feedback from the community prior to submitting them for voting.
With threadless, the jury is the community. They select, via vote, the top designs, of which some are selected to print. Its in their best interest, that the shirts sell, so that it validates the entire process. It is, in the strictest sense of the definition, crowdsourcing. Does it have competitive components? Sure. Is it a strict competition? No.
Is Wikipedia? Sure. A person can make changes, and the hope is that another member of the community will correct mistakes. The community as a whole, will ensure that the information is correct because its in their best interest that the information contained in the Wikipedia.
I'm not familiar with all the details of Threadless. How does the community benefit by picking the designs most likely to sell? Do they all share in ownership of the company or get a percentage of each shirt sale or something other along those lines?
As I said, I'm very familiar with online music submissions where people send in songs and then fans vote. The fans don't get anything other than the satisfaction of voting. I've voted for bands in these things myself.
Nice post Micah. I too get irritated when someone says something like, “let's crowdsource x,” when they probably have no idea what they're really talking about.
Great post. I would add 3) the model must sustain (person leading the crowdsourcing should give back 5x what they get). Your examples of Threadless and the GPS work really well with this.
I think spec will be the black eye to crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is awesome, but everyone has to get something out of it to sustain.
I like your TomTom example, and agree *the wisdom of the crowd* apply's well to them and what they do, but it's good to keep in mind that they are sourcing geodata layers atop an existing base map that they built themselves and this took a lot of time a money to complete it. So, they are kind of a hybrid built upon expert-edited *work* and user-contributed value-adds. In the end, they and the consumers are the beneficiaries. Their database gets better from user contributions and users get a better map.
There is another open source mapping project out there called OpenStreetMap. They built a base map from a collection of volunteers. They call it crowdsourcing as well, but I'm not sure it's the same thing. They get together groups of geo-geek enthusiasts and have weekend mapping parties. It's voluntary, they are experts, and know what they are doing. However, no one gets paid, and the map is free for anyone to use. Very different from TeleAltas (TomToms map data subsidiary).
So, my question back to you might be… Is crowdsourcing defined by getting the consumer or citizen involved, versus experts involved in the creative process? I honestly don't know the answer, but I'm intellectually curious and enjoy talking about it, particularly as this relates to mapping. In mapping, users and makers happen to have a very nice symbiotic relationship thanks to mobility.
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Looks like we can add that silly man Jimmy Wales to the list of boobs who think crowdsourcing is about “tricking” people. I wonder if Jimbo will ever catch on to the rub that nobody's really interested in hearing his opinions any more?
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