10 examples of how crowdsourcing is changing the world.
The mind-bendingly awesome podcast RadioLab once told the story of a 1906 country fair at which attendees were invited to guess the weight of a large ox. Hoping for a cash prize, about 800 people made guesses, though no one got it right.
Afterward, a statistician analyzed the written guesses and discovered something shocking: the average of all the guesses was a mere one pound away from the exact weight of the ox.
The moral? Sometimes a crowd can be smarter than any one of its members, even when they're not actually working together. This is just one of the many, many things that fascinates me about crowdsourcing, the idea of taking almost any task and farming it out to the masses.
Today I wanted to highlight a few clever uses of crowdsourcing, just to show how it's quickly changing almost every aspect of online commerce, research and even human interaction.
The list begins, in no certain order, after the jump.
What it does: Ranks the Web's most popular songs based on blogs, Twitter, MySpace,
Facebook, forums, peer-to-peer file sharing services and more.
Why
it's spiffy: Since the dawn of music as a commodity, labels and DJs
have struggled to guess which songs people actually want to hear. This
service is a fascinating first step toward completely automating that
process, hopefully leaving payola and other crooked influences out of
the equation.
Why it's spooky: There's always something disturbing about the idea of basing creative decisions on what the masses are already in love with. But that's really a criticism of pop culture, not of this cool new service.
What it is: Best-selling author James Patterson let members of the public write most of the chapters for his new book, AirBorne. He handled the first and last chapters of the "chain thriller," then let members of the public submit the other 28.
Why it's spiffy: This idea's been around forever and has been a mainstay of the Web 2.0 evangelist crowd, but AirBorne is one of the first truly mainstream uses of crowdsourced writing.
Why it's spooky: Do we really want major writers putting their names on books written by random people? On the other hand, is that any worse than Tom Clancy and all the other authors who've relied on underbilled co-authors?
What it does: Lets any astronomer, amateur or pro, help classify one million different galaxies that were photographed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The site shows you a photo of a galaxy and asks a few simple questions: Is it a spiral? Does it bulge in the middle? Is there a ring? The resulting database, now packed with more than 50 million classifications, is already being used for a wide range of research.
Why it's spiffy: Believe it or not, this is a task that humans are
simply better suited for than computers. But a project with such a
massive scope would be impossible for almost any research team to
tackle in one lifetime. Launched in July 2007, Galaxy Zoo has harnessed the brainpower of more than 150,000 stargazers and achieved results the site's creators never thought possible.
Why it's spooky: There's something surreal and incredible about the fact that humans can accomplish something that would confound the world's supercomputers. Just imagine how many pie-in-the-sky research goals are just now becoming possible thanks to the global expansion of the Web.
What it does: Can't afford a proofer or fact-checker for your site? Just sit back, relax and let your anal-retentive readers do the work for you! Register your site for free with GooseGrade, and members can use a simple widget to send you suggested edits.
Why it's spiffy: Most bloggers simply don't have the time or energy to route content through proofing. GooseGrade not only helps you avoid boneheaded typos, but also builds a sense of ownership with your site.
Why it's spooky: As someone who spent several years as a newspaper editor, I can't imagine wanting to do that stuff for fun. But hey, different strokes for different folks.
CrowdSpring
What it does: Lets you
post design projects or brief copywriting assignments, name your
price, then pick from a wide range of solutions submitted from around
the world. On average, projects get 68 submissions.
Why it's spiffy: This is just a fantastic way to open up design opportunities to emerging creatives. When all you need is a quick logo or a tagline, why not just set aside $200 and watch the submissions roll in? Here at Luckie, we use a similar system to find music for our TV commercials, so that we have multiple options instead of relying on just one composer.
Why it's spooky: I suppose I should worry that services like this will put a hurt on design-heavy agencies like mine, but honestly, I don't think there's much of a parallel. I've already recommended this site to several nonprofits and small businesses who just need a one-off project that doesn't require any sort of branding insight. Still, I have some concerns that the bargain-hunting on CrowdSpring could force talented designers to dramatically cut back their pricing, but that's life in an open marketplace.
What it does: Shows you a company logo and asks you to write the first
word that comes to mind. These responses are compiled into a "tag
cloud" that shows which words are used most often.
Why it's spiffy: Every business likes to think it has a "brand image," one that's usually something along the lines of "the most respected name in gutter protection." But the truth is often far from the ideal, and you don't have to look much farther than Brand Tags. For example, I doubt Fritos would proclaim itself as "fat," "greasy" and "unhealthy," but those are three of the corn chip brand's most popular tags.
Why it's spooky: Some of our clients are on there, and it can be really disconcerting to see what some people have said. And projects like this often skew negative, since people are rarely inclined to praise for-profit businesses. Still, marketers need a reality check now more than ever, even if the truth hurts.
What it does: Lets you nominate your favorite Twitter posts to be
turned into T-shirts, designed and sold by the popular Threadless.com.
You can even get a cash reward for your submission, up to $500.
Why it's spiffy: Threadless is hands-down one of the best case studies in crowdsourced retail, allowing visitors to decide which designs should be created and sold. This new Twitter Tees initiative shows that Threadless is continuing to find innovative ways to expand the role that customers can play. (PS, that's Advergirl scribe Leigh Householder in the photo, sporting one of the site's first shirts.)
Why it's spooky: Luckily, Threadless contacts the author of the Twitter post to get permission, but there's still something bizarre about the idea that thousands of people around the world could be wearing your snarky, text-messaged quip as fashionable apparel.
What it does: Collects money-saving tips from people around the world. Advice is divided into categories such as shopping, food and travel.
Why it's spiffy: TipJar is just one of many projects powered by the flexible Google Moderator service. Though not as well known as some other Google tools, Moderator has been used by everyone from conference organizers to Barack Obama. If you want feedback from the masses, with the ability to implement it in almost any blog or site, this is a great way to do it.
Why it's spooky: These days, it seems everyone's turning to the masses for advice. Beyond Google Moderator, you've got sites like Yahoo Answers, Ask500People.com and AnswerIt24. But are we downplaying the importance of looking to experts? Is the most popular of 1,000 answers always the best answer?
What it does: Makes a surprisingly addictive game out of a highly technical concept: protein folding. The resulting data can help researchers fight diseases and learn a wide range of surprising things about cellular biology.
Why it's spiffy: Since I'm no scientist, I'll let the site's creators explain:
Why it's spooky: A video game could help cure AIDS? That's some mind-blowing stuff right there.
What it does: Creates a map showing how people's emotions are affected by different parts of a certain city or area. The project relies on more than 1,500 volunteers who agree to wear a device that measures their "Galvanic Skin Response," a sign of heightened emotion.
Why it's spiffy: Imagine if civic planners could actually see how people respond internally to the world around them. The possibilities are endless, and one would hope that architecture and design students around the world are paying close attention to research like this.
Why it's spooky: Designing rooms, businesses or even neighborhoods to create or nurture specific emotions? It would be incredibly creepy, if marketers and developers hadn't been doing it for years.
Whew, that's plenty of examples for now. Please don't hesitate to share your favorite crowdsourcing examples in the comments section.
Awesome post, David. Just gave me a big idea!
Posted by: Jyl (Mom It Forward) | May 30, 2009 at 01:36 AM
Another brilliant example of crowd sourcing is the reCaptcha project for helping digitize books.
Posted by: Brent Friar | May 31, 2009 at 03:11 PM
Great post. This was an interesting topice at SXSW09. I found this video from it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQu0292dftA
I think the hash was #crowdsourcing if I recall correctly, but that one is fairly popular. I walked away knowing there are many types, and some, like Threadless, actually pay people well for designs.
Posted by: Joe Doyle | May 31, 2009 at 10:04 PM
Great and interesting list of examples.
Some others that come to mind:
* Berkeley's SETI@Home (http://tinyurl.com/d3vgv)
* The Gutenberg project (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page)
Posted by: Darren Chandler | June 01, 2009 at 09:56 AM
How about BountyStorms (http://www.bountystorms.com)? It's a site that crowdsources brainstorming and pays bounty for great ideas. It's not limited to just one kind of activity -- any type of collective, creative work can be done on the site.
Posted by: Edward Cruz | June 01, 2009 at 02:15 PM
peopletags.net is also a good example. helps groups of people find out who they are for and against.
Posted by: sam | June 03, 2009 at 03:50 PM
Colspark (http://www.colspark.com) is an interesting twist to crowdsourcing. Students solve real-world corporate challenges and companies use these challenges as a means to identify top talent. This model has numerous benefits to both students and companies.
Check out
Posted by: Vyoma | June 17, 2009 at 05:05 PM
Yet another wonderful blog post on Crowdsourcing and the way it’s bringing the world closer and easier to work within.
Great examples of crowdsourcing sites and its benefits.
Posted by: Christian Logan | March 11, 2010 at 05:02 AM