Wasabi Roll: Crowd Computing, resistance is futile...

There is an old saying, "an individual is smart people are stupid.." However, is that really true? Empirical data has always shown otherwise. Even on the popular gameshow, "Who wants to be a millionaire?", of the lifelines available to the contestant, the "Poll the Audience" was the lock. For whatever reason, the “hive mind” approach seemed to always get the answer correct.

However, we've always given the "hive" concept a bad rap, for instance, just look at the media's bad guys, e.g., the Borg, Dalek's, Cybermen, and the recent US Robotics' NS-5s all subscribe to the hive mind.

Simple logic would dictate that 100 people would have a better chance of getting the answer right, for you are combining 100 lifetime experiences, skills, and talent to the mix. So it would follow that the advent of social networking would tap into this phenomena and produce applications that leverage this rich resource, i.e., crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing: A process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people. This process can occur both online and offline. The difference between crowdsourcing and ordinary outsourcing is that a task or problem is outsourced to an undefined public rather than a specific body, such as paid employees. This method is an effective way to accomplish mundane or tedious tasks at a greater rate, or even tap into expertise, that normally would be cost prohibitive. These tasks typically include such jobs as translation, data validation, image tagging, research, writing, editing, categorization and much more.

The field of Crowdsourcing mobilized nearly $300 million in 2011? Not only have that, the number of people preferring crowdsourcing over outsourcing have doubled (100%) over the last year. Additionally, $1-2 billion have been paid to crowdsourced workers so far. All these vital facts and figures point out towards the enormous success of this innovative industry.

Now if you are unfamiliar with crowdsourcing, there are some fine examples on the net that may be of interest:

ServerFault: This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for system administrators and desktop support professionals. It's 100% free, no registration required. http://serverfault.com
CrowdSPRING: A marketplace for logo design, web design, and crowdsourced writing projects. http://crowdspring.com
InnoCentive: Web-based community matching scientists to research and development challenges presented by companies worldwide. http://innocentive.com
ScriptLance: Don’t get an expensive local computer programmer in – put the job on ScriptLance and outsource your task to the cheapest bidder. Think about it – with armies of underutilized programmers sitting in Asia and Eastern Europe, there’s bound to be someone around the world to prepared to do your job on the cheap. http://www.scriptlance.com/
Spigit: Spigit is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for system administrators and desktop support professionals. It's 100% free, no registration required.
Amazon Mechanical Turk: It is here because the list is not complete without it. Emblazoned on the banner are the words “Mechanical Turk is a marketplace for work”. There you go! Many have been said about this site, both positive and negative. You be the judge. https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome.
CHAORDIX: chaordix.com is a site for Market Research. They guide the process from project planning, to recruiting and moderating your crowd, to research design and implementation, to branded site design and project management, to data analytics and reports, and strategy recommendations. http://chaordix.com
Genius Crowds: is a good place to go when you’ve got some great product ideas. This crowdsourcing site works by submitting your idea, then you give feedback and improve, then the crowd chooses the top ideas for the week that have marketability. http://geniuscrowds.com
CrowdFlower: Here was something unique. Do you ever have a lot of data to collect, like collections that have to be tracked down? What about trends in social media? All of that data has to be collected & analyzed. Well, crowdflower lets you harness the power of the crowd to do just that, and get ‘er done quickly. http://crowdflower.com
Odesk: Employers post their job requirement and members apply for the job. It’s just like your typical matchmaking service without the mixed signals and the requirement for dinner and flowers. https://www.odesk.com/

Honorable Mentions: Small tasks: Microtask sites: presenting an entire project to the crowd of potential workers.

Microtask
Clickworker
Mechanical Turk
Lingotek.

Macrotask sites: large projects that are broken down into tiny tasks. The tasks are well-defined and then distributed to a group of workers.

Innocentive
Quirky

Crowdfunding Sites: Unlike crowdsourcing, instead of paying people to do work, people are asked to donate resources or a specific amount of money to support a proposal or cause.

Kickstarter
SeedUps
Crowdrise

So if you are looking to get answers or assistance, don’t forget the web, you may get the answers you need that allow you to stand above the crowd…

Source(s):

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

About Rick Ricker

An IT professional with over 20 years experience in Information Security, Telecommunications, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.

For more information, contact Rick at (800) 333-8394 x 689·