Crowdsourcing News & Articles

Hi Michelle --

We don’t know each other, but I’m working on a new idea. Through our internal collaboration system, I found that you may have expertise relevant to it based on your documents, posts and profile. I’d like to discuss with you what I’m working on, and what I need to help flesh out this concept.

Regards,
Hutch

Imagine getting a message like that. How would you respond?

If you were going to write a book about social technology, would you write it in isolation or would you use the wisdom of the crowds? Scott Klososky chose to crowdsource the content of his recent book, Enterprise Social Technology: Helping Organizations Harness the Power of Social Media, Social Networking and Social Relevance.

For the longest time, Google (news, site) has expressed disdain against black-hat search engine optimization methods. These include keyword-stuffing, redirects and all sorts of underhanded tactics. Recently, though, the spotlight has been pointed toward so-called content farms, which are essentially websites with large collections of articles that are supposedly of low-quality, and designed specifically to monetize on-page advertisements.

All the excitement about Quora these past few days has us curious -- could Quora be a model for an effective enterprise knowledge management tool?

Most of us understand the value of sharing information. But when the information belongs to others, we wonder “what’s the point?” Yet, as massive amounts of information abound, the art of content curation can help us provide resources to our audiences while positing ourselves as an authority. Here’s how.

There are a number of potential use cases for Social CRM, but they don't all provide a high value to your organization. One that does, is Innovation.

Web 2.0 led to many phenomena that changed our lives and crowdsourcing is definitely one of them. But if you are considering going the crowdsourcing route to get your development work completed (or any other work for that matter), then take minute to consider the pros and cons.

Another week of expert advice on collaboration has passed us by. This time our little helpers focused on crowdsourcing, as well as disrupting everything we thought we knew was true about adoption. Here's a quick recap: 

In part one of Crowdsourcing and the Next Wave of Collaboration, we talked about the definition of crowdsourcing innovation, and its problems and successes. In part 2, we take a look at the maturity of both the practice and technology, as well where survey respondents were in their deployment of these solutions.

Crowdsourcing innovation is primarily about collaboration, and to better understand the drivers and practices behind it, Information Architected conducted a survey. Here are some of their findings.

This week's Enterprise 2.0 conference is bubbling over with interesting tidbits, and not just from well-known players. Cisco Systems revealed a slew of new products, including a collaboration platform poised to stiffen the competition with giants like Microsoft and Google. Meanwhile, our fine-feathered, 140 character friend acquired some analytics tools for commercial partners.  

Size matters--when it comes to business intelligence. The larger the company, the more complicated it can be to harvest the right knowledge from the right people. Crowdsourcing is the obvious answer here, but if you're bored with the usual approach, a solution called Crowdcast aims to shake things up with a gambling-flavored twist. 

Google seems on board with the wisdom of the crowd and perhaps a little innovation management. And now they share the ability to do both with you by making available an API for their Google Moderator.

"Crowds are smartest when the people in them are encouraged to act as individuals as much as possible," says James Surowiecki, author of the best-selling business book The Wisdom of Crowds and the opening keynote presenter at the MarkLogic User Conference yesterday, in San Francisco.

In his keynote address James explained why the power of the crowd trumps individual contributions 90% of the time. Let's have a look.

Are you a designer looking for clients? Or are you looking for a designer but don't know where to begin? Meet 99designs. 

99designs, one of the largest design competition marketplaces, has a platform that allows graphic designers and their clients to crowdsource. Lucky for you, they will be demonstrating the platform at the San Francisco New Tech Meetup, one of San Francisco's largest and longest running technology event and community group.