Crowdsourcing in 2014: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility (link)
By Narinder Singh
“At the onset of 2014 we find crowdsourcing where cloud was just a few short years ago – widely discussed, unevenly adopted and on the cusp of widespread industry impact.”
In this article the author provides a glimpse into the current state of how crowds are being utilised in 2014 and their future potential.
Despite crowd-based services being a hot topic of debate since 2005, with Surowiecki’s ‘Wisdom of Crowds’, crowdsourcing is still a fresh and relevant concept. In the author’s own studies he has found that the actual potential is greater than first imagined a decade ago, with groups over 40 – performing tasks better than 99% of individuals. With this sort of potential the author expects to see an increase in the number of crowd-based services in the near-future.
“By 2016, application service providers will have replaced 20 percent of their internal application management staff with crowd sourcing and community sourcing.”
The author makes it clear that he is a big proponent of the power of crowds. With developments in cloud, social and mobile technologies, crowds can now solve more complex problems quicker than ever before. Companies such as Uber and Airbnb show that crowdsourcing and utilising crowds is here to stay.
“For all the benefits of crowds, without control and understanding, they can become herds and reinforce group think.”
Despite the optimism, the author does present some negative aspects to crowds. He is especially concerned with companies who just apply crowdsourcing to their business without enough consideration on the crowd’s role or how they will be managed.
To avoid backlash from the crowd he encourages those managing communities/crowds to:
- Provide necessary incentives.
- Give fair evaluation of work done.
- Transparency.
- Avoid herds/groupthink.
- Try to maintain a diversity of perspectives.
All in all, crowds for the author can be transformative however they must be managed effectively in order for companies to reap their full benefits.
Relevancy to Be Seated
- Crowds can be accurate in numbers over 40+. Services must attract a certain number of users before the effect of crowds really takes shape.
- Important to remember crowds/communities need to be managed. Want to avoid crowd turning to a mob/herd and reviewing a venue negatively again and again because of groupthink/reinforcement of ideas. In theory if we have over 40+ members reviews should even out and be moderately accurate.
- Need to think about incentives for users, won’t contribute unless they feel valued unless managed effectively.
Criticism
Very positive, perhaps biased because the authors work seems to be based around crowds. Bit lightweight in terms of facts, figures and content but is from Wired, so a reputable source and never meant to be too dense.
