https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing
Microwork Microwork is a series of small tasks which together comprise a large unified project, and are completed by many people over the Internet. [1] [2] Microwork is considered the smallest unit of work in a virtual assembly line. [3] It is most often used to describe tasks for which no efficient algorithm has been devised, and require human intelligence to complete reliably. The term was developed in 2008 by Leila Chirayath Janah of Samasource. [4] [5] Microtasking[edit] Microtasking is the process of splitting a job into its component microwork and distributing this work over the Internet. Since the inception of microwork, many online services have been developed that specialize in different types of microtasking. Most of them rely on a large, voluntary workforce composed of Internet users from around the world.
Social Site Nextdoor Wants to Connect You With Your Neighbors This is the neighborhood picnic of the digital age. With neighborhood social network, Nextdoor, communities can stay up-to-date with everything from crime, activities and even ask the neighborhood if they can borrow the proverbial cup of sugar. Nextdoor announced on Tuesday that it just closed a new round of funding with existing and new funders: Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Greylock Partners and Shasta Ventures, among others, to the tune of $18.6 million. Nextdoor's CEO and Co-founder, Nirav Tolia, tells Mashable he plans to put the funding toward expanding their 32 person workforce and pushing Nextdoor out to new neighborhoods. Already more than 3,600 neighborhoods in 48 states use Nextdoor, and about 22 new neighborhoods sign up for the service every day. This growth has allowed them to attract this most recent round of funding, Tolia says.
The Power of Crowd Testing Contributed by Manoj Narayanan Cloud-enabled crowd testing fits into the full testing lifecycle when organizations blend traditional and crowdsourcing approaches. Although crowd sourcing as a concept is not necessarily new, the Internet and mobile devices have acted as catalysts that have triggered a chain reaction, increasing the technique's effectiveness and ROI. Domain Name Contests Latest Name Contest Winners Domain Name Contests Hold a Domain Name Contest Get Started
Solver Develops Solution to Help Clean Up Remaining Oil From the 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster Boston, MA and Cordova, AK - November 7, 2007 - InnoCentive, the leader in prize-based Open Innovation sourcing, is helping to make a positive impact on Environmental Conservation by working with the Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI) and other conservation groups. OSRI has posted 3 Challenges on the InnoCentive website, all dealing with oil spill recovery issues. The first of these challenges was solved last week by an oil industry outsider who used his expertise in the concrete industry to come up with the winning solution. John Davis, an InnoCentive Solver from the Central United States, was awarded $20,000 for his creative solution. This first OSRI Challenge required a method for separating oil from water on oil recovery barges after the oil and water had frozen to a viscous mass. Having no background in the oil industry, John applied his expertise and proposed using an existing product commonly used in the concrete industry.
Airtasker Lets You Outsource Your Entire Life Got a small task you need completed — let’s say assembling an IKEA bookshelf or cleaning your disgusting oven — and don’t have the time to do it yourself? Airtasker lets you advertise to find a local who might be willing to do the job for a small fee. To use Airtasker, you simply post on the site, listing what you want done and what you’re willing to pay.
Testing with the crowd Nowadays, everyone is talking about "the cloud". The cloud is cool, the cloud is THE solution! Change two letters and there's another web 2.0 phenomenon waiting for you. Crowdsourcing improves predictive texting - tech - 25 February 2012 SMARTPHONES may soon get a lot better at finishing your sentences for you - with the help of words and phrases gleaned from crowdsourcing. The software packages in today's phones often struggle with texts and voice commands if a user attempts words or phrases that aren't included in the phone's database. To see if the crowd could help, Keith Vertanen of Montana Tech in Butte and Per Ola Kristensson at the University of St Andrews, UK, called upon workers of the Amazon Mechanical Turk. InnoCentive Challenges Browser The Tracking and Tracing Books Prize Competition seeks innovations to track books destined for early-grade classrooms and learning centers in low-income countries and allow stakeholders, ranging from parents to Ministries of Education and donor agencies, to quickly and easily access tracking information. There are three phases to this Prize Competition. The first phase requires a written description of the proposed innovation and the expertise and experience of the Solver. There is a prize pot of a least $20,000 for this phase. Entrants successful in Phase 1 will be invited to refine and/or develop their innovation and work with the ACR GCD partners to pilot it in Phases 2 and 3, with a further prize of $100,000 awarded at the completion of Phase 3. By submitting, you are providing ACR GCD with a non-exclusive license to use any information contained in your submission (excluding personal identifying information), irrespective of whether your submission receives an award.
More on Crowd Testing - Evolution into Community Testing As promised, penning down the thoughts on different approaches to handling crowd testing as part of overall organization strategy... We can look at four ways of doing this. • As an add-on to testing: Crowd testing can be used as a complementary add-on prior to production release. This will be effective in catching any residual UI and configuration defects. Options like VDI (Virtual Desktop Interface) access can be considered if security or privacy concerns prevent the organization from letting the crowd access the site through the Internet.
Cairns Blog: Crowdsourcing Governance [Video intro ends at 52 seconds; Intro by Dr. Gref ends at 2'18; Speech ends at 11'15; then Q&A] For Prime Minister Putin's presentation, click here. Crowdsourcing Governance We’ve heard today that as individuals we are smarter collaborating together than working alone. Crowdsourcing: Pros, Cons, and More Say you’re starting a new online shopping site, and you imported thousands of products. Now you need to tag and categorize them, a job which seems tedious and will take many hours of work. You could do it all by yourself, or you could outsource it to crowd, and the action of outsourcing a task to the undefined public is recognized as crowdsourcing. In crowdsourcing, you can outsource the task to not only a small group of person, but also tens of thousands of people. That’s the genuine advantage of the crowdsourcing, bringing in mass intelligence to solve problems of all kinds with affordable price. The question is, is it really intelligent to use crowdsourcing?
Using Social Media to Test Your Idea Before You Try to Sell It Offerings from Creme Delicious. When starting a business, new entrepreneurs often spend time naming the business and developing a logo and printing business cards and perfecting the look and feel of their packaging before they know whether they have a viable product or service. There’s now a better way — social media has become the ultimate tool for market research. Stephanie Clifford wrote an article for The Times this week about how big corporations are replacing focus groups with social media, but it works for small businesses, too. Thanks to social media — especially Twitter — small businesses now have the ability to determine what their customers want and what they are willing to pay.