Crowdsourcing

Ever since the term "crowdsourcing" was coined in 2006 by Wired writer Jeff Howe, group activities ranging from the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary to the choosing of new colors for M & Ms have been labeled with this most buzz-generating of media buzzwords. In this account, grounded in empirical literature, the author explains what crowdsourcing is, what it is not, and how it works. Crowdsourcing, the author tells us, is an online, distributed problem solving and production model that leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes set forth by a crowdsourcing organization - corporate, government, or volunteer. The author describes the intellectual roots of the idea of crowdsourcing in such concepts as collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, and distributed computing. He surveys the major issues in crowdsourcing, including crowd motivation, the misconception of the amateur participant, crowdfunding, and the danger of "crowdsploitation" of volunteer labor, citing real-world examples from Threadless, InnoCentive, and other organizations. He also considers the future of crowdsourcing in both theory and practice, describing its possible roles in journalism, governance, national security, and science and health.