crowdsourcing

A person has an idea for a research project. They then record a video explaining their idea. WellSpringboard then post this video to the site, give it a funding goal and then promote the idea via their social media channels. Once enough people have funded the project, it is then opened up to researchers who apply to carry out the research.[read more]

List.ly boosts blog traffic (image: Krissy.Venosdale/Flickr)

There are a lot of different tools to help with content creation, drive traffic, and keep your website up to date, but there's one tool that can help you do all three at the same time: List.ly. According to co-founder Nick Kellet, List.ly is "true social curation with lists as a metaphor."[read more]

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There are many online tools that can help you ideate quickly and effectively. Here are four free tools for generating relevant and engaging content ideas.[read more]

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Facebook cuts off access to non-sharing apps, Kim Dotcom's Mega finds 1mm users in 24 hours, 2012's crowdsourcing wins, and more.[read more]

So, an ingenious new nonprofit effort called StrikeDebt was created by a team of attorneys and as an offshoot of the Occupy Movement. Their latest effort was built to keep debt out of the hands of collectors by using donations to buy it instead, and then abolish it. This campaign, called the “Rolling Jubilee” is described as “a bailout of the 99% by the 99%.”[read more]

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Could individuals start to benefit from new technologies and consumer behaviours? Would they be willing to follow the examples of Starbucks and others, and let online communities make decisions for them?[read more]

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What if we approached public involvement and public engagement as an exercise in crowdsourcing? Government might learn something about planning and building government projects if we viewed public engagement in the same way corporations are now crowdsourcing as a form of social media focus groups.[read more]

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The Twitter Political Index is a daily measurement that evaluates the sentiment of Twitter users feelings about the candidates based on an estimated two million Twitter mentions of the candidates in a given week relative to more than 400 million tweets sent about other topics each day.[read more]

 

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The concept of “crowdsourcing” – which has many varying definitions and connotations–has grown exponentially over the last few years as more and more companies are recognizing the “power of the crowd.”[read more]

When developing any kind of web site, think first about desired feelings and thoughts of your visitors. The same goes for crowdsourcing projects. I[read more]

In today’s knowledge-based economy, companies can no longer rely on their internal workforce to advance their business processes. Instead, many companies are now turning to intelligent crowdsourcing to effectively expand their human capital without putting a strain on their current resources.[read more]

Jason Breed recently penned a fantastic article discussing the management breakthrough that is Social Innovation. I pick up on Jason's themes here and continue by illuminating how an idea that is socially raised, can then be accelerated further down the product development life-cycle via Directed Innovation and a Community Development approach.[read more]

Next time a social media guru disses blogs - remember blogs are only as old-fashioned as the thinking of the person who uses them. Here are 5 reasons why we love blogs (and you should too).[read more]

After the huge financial crash Iceland suffered back in 2008, they have bounced back into the headlines with a world first – crowdsourcing their new constitution across social media channels. Is it a risky mob rule strategy or is it a strategy for democratic success? Interestingly, this question is not unique to Iceland. This is the very same decision faced by any brand or business in the era of the social web. Adopt a crowdsourced digital strategy or continue with an out dated, old school approach to business and face extinction.[read more]

Using Twitter to openly ask your followers and the community as a whole has additional benefits. By listening, organizations gain first-hand insight on their customers' desires.You have the option to follow up with your respondents in real time. Plus, because participants are not being led by moderators or necessarily thinking about the expectations for responses, the answers they give can be more genuine and revealing.[read more]

We got hammered with snow. Close to 20 inches around my block and 60-70 mph wind gusts near Lake Michigan (which also happens to be where I live). Seeing how I had a normal one hour commute to the office normally, I worked from the home office today.Through this, I learned how social tools were leveraged to help people out and share what was going on. Here are a couple of observations[read more]

The premise behind Quora is so familiar that, at first glance, it almost gets dismissed as yet another me-too question and answer platform. Now, after its 2010 move from beta to public, Quora has proven to be far more than that. At its most basic level, Quora lets users ask questions of all types to the community, as well as...[read more]

Almost anyone you meet in marketing will usually be a fan of getting their data and insights about major trends in consumer behaviour from research reports. After all, we generally pay a lot of money for them, and (ironically) many of the most authoritative are BRANDED either by a research organization, or by an authoritative...[read more]

After carefully studying the business case for and value proposition of crowdsourcing for corporate design requirements, my initial reaction was this might be the end for creative services and graphics firms. Six weeks later I'm now through an initial project with Chicago-based Crowdspring and pleased with the result.  The creative...[read more]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about crowdsourcing and whether or not the benefits suggested by proponents are overstated. It’s not that crowdsourcing doesn’t have value, the problem I have with it when applied to generalized questions is that the result often mirrors the conventional wisdom on any given subject. It’s not surprising, we...[read more]