Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the public delegation of open source code or software from internal employees or associates to third party developers and programmers.
Contents
Overview
“Crowdsourcing” can be described as the public release of open source code or software from a company or corporation to third party developers and programmers. Crowdsourcing is an innovative, powerful method in accomplishing many technological tasks and benchmarks with relative ease. The release of open source code under free software licensing systems has allowed third party programmers to manipulate, revise, and innovate new applications for Linux and Android Operating Systems and Android mobile markets. In particular, the open sourcing of Android's operating system lets programmers and developers tweak and make changes to Android's specifications that have changed the mobile phone markets. By cutting costs and generating millions of ideas in a more convenient way, the benefits of crowdsourcing give companies more incentive to release open source code to independent programmers and developers.
In 2008, Jeff Howe published a book called "Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business" that provides an overview of the drawbacks and benefits of crowdsourcing and its many applications in business, film, and research. [1]
Crowdsourcing in Business
Crowdsourcing has been successful in companies you may have heard of such as Quora Search Engine, Twitter, Threadless Tees, Netflix, and Google among others.
Threadless
On Threadless, artists can create their own t-shirt designs where other community members vote for their favorite designs. They use incentive-based marketing where members receive credit for referring friends that later become customers, and winning designers receive up to $2,000, but more importantly acknowledgment from their peers.
Linux
Linux is an open-source software developed by thousands of contributors both amateurs and professionals alike. Contributors disseminated the work to suit their own expertise. As more contributors submit their work, the reputability of Linux grows.
InnoCentive/ Proctor & Gamble
Proctor & Gamble used out-of-house research for product development and opened communication between departments. Researchers sought solutions for Proctor & Gamble, not only to receive compensation, but to build their resume and to solve a meaningful challenge outside the workplace. The creation of Innocentive has helped triple P&G's net profit to $10 billion.
We Are the Strange
Mike Belmont, an amateur filmmaker created a fan base through Youtube without the help of movie producers and eventually premiering a movie at the 2007 Sundance Festival. By showing clips on Youtube, he was able to receive feedback and perfect his videos the liking of the audience. This marked an important change in movie production with no middle-man, cutting cost and allowing fans to become more personally invested in the movie.
eBird
eBird is an internet site where anyone can post bird sightings. Because of the large data submissions, are able to identify the pattern of flights that would not be able tracked with just professionals. This provides professionals more time to interpret the data.
Quora
Quora increased its reliability and popularity as a search engine and question answering forum through crowdsourcing. By granting users permission to vote answers and search links up or down, Quora combines aspects of Wikipedia with attributes of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to give users a balanced, impeccable search engine and question and answer forum. Like Wikipedia, content can be linked to relevant topics and answers, and edited if they are not operating to Quora’s crowdsourcing standard. The crowdsourcing components of Quora’s website, and its follow feature similar to Twitter has helped Quora gain unprecedented success.
Netflix
Netflix boldly offered one million dollars for its crowdsourcing contest. The challenge went to any programmers and developers who could build or improve upon Netflix’s current software and system of recommending movies to its subscriber base. Three years later, Netflix’s customer base is nearly 24 million and they are generating over 2 billion dollars in revenue. It goes without saying Google Android has had success in the mobile phone market, and threadless tees give consumers a chance to leave their opinion and customize t-shirts like never before.
Failures
Unfortunately, crowdsourcing has had its failures as well. GAP Clothing's logo change was crowdsourced for public opinion and feedback that caused GAP to make certain decisions leading to the collapse of the company's financial structure and well-being. Crowdsourcing is beneficial in many cases, but this was not one of them. [2] GAP relied exclusively on crowdsourcing to generate feedback for its new logo and change in branding. A large response of negative public opinions does not necessarily equate to a need for change in real world situations.[3] Instead of remaining confident in their new logo, GAP tried to reinvent their product image and positioning over and over again. As a result, GAP unintentionally distanced themselves even farther from their consumer base. Eventually, GAP collapsed financially and was forced to shut down.
Crowdsourcing is increasingly being utilized in the non-profit sector. Ushahidi, an open source platform that aggregates user-contributed information in the form of an interactive GIS map, was developed during the 2007 Kenyan election violence. Since then, the platform has been extensively used in mapping natural disaster areas and rioting in the 2010 Haitian earthquake and Japanese tsunami.
Ethical Conflicts To Consider in Crowdsourcing
The conflict of ownership and patenting might become more of a problem while the community of developers working on open source projects have been increasing. Successes such as Google Android have been growing their share in Netflix, Quora and the expansive mobile market. For example, the Android OS's ability to hold multi-core processors allows for advanced program capability, storage, and availability. If a developer were to enhance the processing ability of Android 2.2, would Google have a patented share or would the developer have full control and ownership? Third-party developers are beginning to wonder though whether or not their programs and applications will be unique and owned by the creator, or if Google will authorize a policy in which they can patent or control a share of all profits from third party development of Android Operating System programs and applications. Another problem arises if a developer creates an application or program that improves upon the original open source code he or she obtained publicly. If the developer receives praise and profits from ameliorating another programmer's open source code, is he inclined or forced to acknowledge the original developer's contributions? These are some of the predicaments and ethical implications of crowdsourcing in today's information society.
Another inherent problem in crowdsourcing is the lack of accountability. If everyone is in charge, no one is responsible for their actions. This causes uncertainty and leaves users’ projects and creations to subjective and misguided errors. For example, what if someone created several fake accounts and purposely tried to give great feedback to irrelevant links or intentionally answer questions incorrectly on Quora? They could do this to humor themselves, or maybe they had an agenda in mind because they were pro-Google and against Quora for any arbitrary reason. If there were no checks and balances in place to correct these errors, crowdsourcing could hurt a company or website more than it could help.
Overall, crowdsourcing is beneficial to technology despite the ethical problems, ownership issues, and conflict of external validity.
See Also
Citations and References
- ↑ Howe, Jeff. Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. New York: Crown Business, 2008. Print.
- ↑ Lippman, Greg. "Crowdsourcing Their Way Into One Big Mess." Brandweek: Vol. 51, Issue 38. 25 Oct 2010. Web. 3 Oct 2011: 26.
- ↑ O'Neil, Mathieu. "Shirky and Sanger, or the Costs of Crowdsourcing." Journal of Science Communication. SISSA International School for Advanced Studies, 1 Sept 2010. Web. 3 Oct 2011.
