crowd+sourcing

=Tool/technology title=

Author(s): Julie Phillips

1. Definition
Crowdsourcing is when tasks are outsourced (given to others) by the employer or the principal individual responsible for it, to a group of people (undefined) through an open call. Because the call is open to a wide range of people, it gets people who are the best suited to carry out the specific task, and the solve complex problems with the best and most relevant ideas. It should be noted however that the term crowdsourcing is associated with both controversy and criticism.

2. Examples of products (open source/free or commercial)
CloudCrowd is an online work platform that breaks work into serialized project workflows, and makes individual tasks available to crowdsourced workers. Catawiki is an online catalogue and marketplace for collectables. Facebook also used crowdsoursing since 2008 to create different language versions of its site

If you want to solve a problem or get ideas on how to, you can ask groups to follow it on Twitter e.g. if you want to get an opinion on a research design for a study for example, you might get people to follow it on Twitter.

4. Other resources (articles, guides, videos, examples...)
http://www.exinfm.com/board/crowdsourcing.htm http://www.apexart.org/exhibitions/grover.htm