Crowdsourcing is a relatively recent workplace trend that isn’t going away. On the one hand, it definitely generates healthy competition, and companies stand to win out in a big way when service providers and freelancers are openly vying for your dollar. We’ve looked at some examples in the past, like 99 designs, a site where designers enter competitions to win contracts. InnoCentive has a different take on crowdsourcing. Their focus is not as narrow or specific as that of 99 designs. Instead, they offer a broad reaching problem-solving approach. InnoCentive lets organizations create “Challenges” that “Problem Solvers” can then submit...
Venture capital is drying up, with less money flowing in fewer deals, but at least one company managed to score a tidy sum. On Tuesday uTest -- which crowdsources software testing -- announced it had secured $5 million in Series B financing. What makes the news remarkable is that uTest is a crowdsourcing company. Hype notwithstanding, crowdsourcing hasn't yielded more than a few viable businesses in the last few years. We know crowdsourcing exists because we've seen it flourish in the wild, which is to say, a few entrepreneurs have stumbled into very profitable businesses by building vibrant communities...
Cscout Japan points us to a great use of crowdsourcing to come up with new flavors for ramen noodles and fruit drinks in Japan. Recognizing the large community of ramen eaters online, the instant noodle company Acebook, has been collaborating with Japan’s largest social networking site Mixi to crowdsource new flavors and marketing slogans to go along with them. Over 4000 users voted for the following winning flavors that will be debuted in December: Collagen noodles, Milk Tantanmen, Bacon, egg, and vegetables and Ginseng Chicken. In the beverage world, Calpis has adopted a similar strategy, crowdsourcing flavor combinations from...
We’ve looked at freelance outsourcing and crowdsourcing sites in the past - places like 99 Designs for graphics work or Elance for programming and other fields. Generally speaking, it seems that most web workers in our audience view these sites as a threat, encouraging rate cutting and spec work (depending on the site). But it seems unlikely that the trend of global outsourcing is going to go away any time soon, or that sites which enable it will go out of business. As a result, it’s probably smart for web workers to learn what’s out there, and to figure out...
Peter Kim is a Senior Partner at Dachis Corporation. He blogs about social computing and marketing at Being Peter Kim. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been curating a list of social media marketing examples. The list started with 100 examples (including 35+ from Mashable) and has since tripled in size with the participation of over a hundred contributors with examples from companies around the world. We could probably come up with 3,000 examples instead of 300 - but the current set already gives us a pretty good sample to think about. One takeaway: for now, those neurotic...
Thanks to some crowdsourcing on Twitter tonight, I have a nifty new badge for you to put up on your blog. If you’re one of the Rockstars who is part of this community, make sure you add your name to the list (I update the submissions every handful of days). I’d love to make sure people know you’re part of the community here! To that end, I’m proud to share some badges that you can put on your blog, created by some friends. I’d be honored if you want to put them on your blog, and I’ve included the...
If you are in the 'content' and / or media business, Jeff Howe's new book 'Crowdsourcing' is a must read, because it describes a powerful trend that will change the way we do business: because of the fact that we are all connected now, at all times (well... just about), it is no longer just authorized insiders, professionals, employees or otherwise paid workers in large firms that can solve large problems or contribute to complex projects. Now, the world can be your talent (as Don Tapscott is putting it, in Wikinomics, years ago), and companies like Procter & Gamble are...
Continuing my crowdsourcing of Web2 conversations (and this is nearly the last one), on the third day, and just a few hours after Elon Musk, I'll be talking to Shai Agassi, founder and CEO of Better Place, and former President at SAP. Agassi is yet another example of a tech executive who left the IT industry to boil a new ocean, in this case, the automobile industry. Wired recently put Shai on the cover, his plan to "sell cars like cel phones" is audacious, and some say impossible. Remember that I'm running a contest for best comments: I've decided...
The Rails Rumble 2008 took place over the weekend of October 18th. The 48 hour Rails competition resulted in 137 Ruby-on-Rails-based applications, all taken from concept to execution in 48 hours. That’s an impressive feat, and now you can go to the website, sign up, and vote for your favorites. It’s hard to pick from such an impressive list, but here are my thoughts on ten applications to watch out of all 137. Take a look at these, then go see the rest of the 137 and place your own vote while the voting is still open. You could influence the...
123people is a people search engine that has been in private beta since February of this year. Originally covering only Europe, the company is throwing open its doors to international people searches with a US launch and going into open beta today. If you have ever heard that nothing is private on the Internet, you can believe it. Following in the footsteps of sites like Spokeo and Wink, 123people culls information about you from a variety of sites on the Web. Some of these you expect to be public, like Flickr, but other information comes from sites people might assume...
Last up in my crowdsourcing of CM Summit conversations is Gian Fulgoni, Founder and Chair of Comscore, the controversial and defacto measurement service for the Internet. Gian is no stranger to these pages, I've interviewed him recently here; posted about his company here, and here. Comscore is the company "everyone loves to hate," according to a recent Fortune piece. My own view of the company has become more nuanced in the past year or so. I am on the board of the IAB, and Comscore, along with rival Neilsen, have agreed to undergo an MRC audit to address, once...
Continuing my crowdsourcing of questions for one-on-one conversations at this week's CM Summit is Joel Hyatt, CEO of Current. Founded in 2005, Current is "the only 24/7 cable and satellite television network and Internet site produced and programmed in collaboration with its audience." The company has grown to nearly $64 million in revenues (2007) but has yet to hit profits, early this year it filed a public offering ($100 mm in proceeds), which has not completed due, one presumes, to market conditions. Still and all, a cable channel that counts more than 50mm potential viewers is a serious asset,...
