14 Ways to Do It With Others, Crowdsourcing
August 28, 2008As opposed to Do it Yourself (DIY).
Want to figure out how to use the huddled masses of the internet to do your job for you?
Crowdsourcing is the answer. It is inevitable in the Web 2.0 world of bringing people together. Below is a list of 14 online tools that harness the talents of groups to help you produce a product, concept, business. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a nice start that we plan to build on.
Twitter - First on the list is actually the tool I use to put together a lot of my lists when I need the input of others. If you have a knowledgeable network, throwing a question out to the Twitter community can return quick and amazing responses.
Idea Crossing - Idea Crossing seems to be targeting the same corporate idea vaccum as Kluster Labs. Providing a better system for corporate America to be able to harness their hidden creative talent through an online democratically integrated process.
“Idea Crossing’s DESIGN, PRODUCE, PLAY process streamlines the complexities of innovation competitions, giving corporations, foundations, and academic institutions a means of controlling creative chaos.”
Threadless.com - A community-centered online apparel (mainly t-shirts) store inspired by an online t-shirt design contest its founders entered and won in 2000. Members of the Threadless community submit t-shirt designs online; the designs are then put to a public vote. A small percentage of submitted designs are selected for printing and sold through an online store. Creators of the winning designs receive a prize of cash and store credit.
Wiki Wiki - You could say it all started with the god of crowdsourcing, Wikipedia, the concept of wiki’s has taken off and is now forming the backbone of many large grouping of research, definitions, and insight for everything form Medical Schools to Stargate Atlantis Fans.
99 designs allows you to crowdsource your design needs. If an organization or an individual seeks a new design, they hold a “contest” of sorts using the tools built into 99 Designs and offer up some money for their project. Designers are then allowed to post entries for these and the contest holder is allowed to pick and choose the best design(s) and distribute the money based on the winning design.
Name This - A product of Kluster.com, the ultra democratic crowdsourcing site that launched at TED conference last year. Kluster has stumbled a bit, scrapping their one-size-meets-all project development model where engineering, industrial design, copy writing, naming, graphic design and everything else was all worked into one model. Instead they have focused more recently in two directions. The first is niche areas of crowdsourcing, of which NameThis.com is a current success, allowing users to name products, companies, etc. with money for the top 3 winners. The other direction of cluster is concerned with.
eLance - eLance facilitates from hiring to collaboration to payment. You can search over 40,000 profiles for services including logo design, user interface, writing, translation, and finance. Profiles list the number of projects and reviews, useful in researching potential new vendors.
Slice The Pie - Slicethepie.com enables artists to raise money directly from their fans to professionally record and release an album. Artists can raise money directly from their fans to professionally record albums. Artists who secure financing through the site pay Slicethepie a small royalty on album sales but keep all their copyright and publishing rights.
oDesk - oDesk is crowdsourcing for finding programmers, creating teams and running a virtual development team or project online. Talent from around the world offer rates from $7 to $40+ per hour.
VenCorps - Created by the folks that started Cambrian House, Vencorps is startup focused. Startups present their case in video and details about their business venture and the community votes on who should win possible investment dollars and support from VenCorps and their expertise.
uTest - Good QA is commonly a shortfall for many web pros and agencies. uTest fills that gap as a global marketplace for software application testing providing QA professionals from around the world. Tools exist for writing test plans, selecting testers, individual or aggregate according to environment, experience and/or expertise. You can manage QA cycles, projects and processes. They setup testers from around the world who are all motivated to find bugs by getting paid.
BzzAgent’s Frogpond -As a clearing house for marketing driven word of mouth efforts, BzzAgent’s Frogpond connects marketers within a massive consumer network of 365,000 members, allowing the them to choose what hot new products and services they want to try out and promote. They drive significant traffic and create great feedback loops.
A Swarm of Angels - “A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members.”
Polls, Crowdsourcing Opinion - Ok this is a stretch, but technically correct. And I mainly wanted to include this because of the new growth a few of these free poll sites are gaining. Check out PollDaddy.com and my sharp looking favorite, Slantly.com.
More to come, suggest your own or wait for our updates.
Apart from Twitter, I’ve a lot to discover. Thanks.
And thanks to the Group Writing Project promoted by Problogger that let me discovered your site
Obviously I mean apart Twitter and Wiki.
no problem, thanks for visiting.. make sure to add your own if you discover any new ones
similar to slicethepie.com is http://www.sellaband.com/ another music/band oriented service.
cool post. enjoyed.
found these on a site i was checking out last week. they had some of the same ones above as well. im sure this list could go on forever. so here is my additions.
http://www.ideawicket.com - evaluating business models
http://www.crowdspirit.com - product development by the crowds
http://www.spigit.com - a Startup game - evaluating business ideas
http://www.Incuby.com - online community for inventors
http://www.Ideaconnection.com - Open Innovation - idea marketplace
http://www.Ponoko.com - Rapid Prototyping platform
These are some reat ways to employ feedback from a community. You can also think about using LinkedIn Answers, as well as discussions forums in groups on places like Facebook.
Prediction markets are another way of gathering public opinion. There are quite a few popping up right now, but some of the better ones include http:// http://www.intrade.com (uses real money) and http://www.hubdub.com (uses play money). They’ve been proven consistently more accurate than polls since participants have a stake in the game.
Hi, great title - I found you via ProBlogger. I have seen some great crowd sourcing projects and will be using this method in my own future projects.
A really nice list of companies. Can I persuade you to rename it “15 Ways to Do It With Others, Crowdsourcing”?
crowdSPRING (http://www.crowdspring.com) is the creative marketplace. Buyers who need a new logo, website, marketing materials or other creative content post what they need, when they need it and how much they want to pay. Once posted, creatives from around the world will submit actual work – not bids or proposals – for the buyer to review. As the submissions come in, buyers are able to review, sort, rate, provide feedback and collaborate with creatives until they find the “the one.” crowdSPRING provides customized legal contracts, full project management, robust notifications, and many more. Thousands of creatives from 130+ countries work on crowdSPRING.
Here’s how we differ from other marketplaces that you’ve named above:
1. We guarantee in writing that the buyer will receive at least 25 entries or a full refund (including our commission).
2. Each project on crowdSPRING is protected by a free, customized intellectual property agreement that is delivered to both buyer and winning creative when the winning creative is selected
3. We provide full end to end project management with file uploads, feedback, scoring, crowd scoring, etc.
4. We have a robust notification/communication system that sends you notices every step of the way.
5. We take care of paying the designer anywhere in the world. We always require escrow in our projects before a project starts - and this encourages more and better designers to participate. You’ll find some of the very best designers working online, on crowdSPRING.
6. We have excellent customer service. For real: many have written about this.
So - what say you? “15 Ways…”?
Thanks again for putting together such a nice list of companies.
Best,
Ross Kimbarovsky
co-Founder
http://www.crowdspring.com
[...] 14 Ways to Do It With Others, Crowdsourcing « Internet Marketing - The Stratius Blog - List of social media tools [...]
[...] 14 Ways to Do It With Others, Crowdsourcing « Internet Marketing - The Stratius Blog "Crowdsourcing is the answer. It is inevitable in the Web 2.0 world of bringing people together. Below is a list of 14 online tools that harness the talents of groups to help you produce a product, concept, business. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a nice start that we plan to build on." Be sure to check the comments too as there are some good additional suggestions there (tags: tools community collaboration crowdsourcing) [...]
To attract more of a crowd to the potential of crowdsourcing - done right - we need more coverage of successful results. Several approaches have not worked. Some have. As an optimist, crowdsourcing fan and former WSJ reporter, I am eager to see such stories.
Perchance you might start a list here - and ask for readers to contribute their favorites; the helpful commenters here already gave credence to the possibilities.
Here’s to crowdsourcing crowdsourcing stories. Then “Here Comes Everybody, eh Shirky?
- Kare, movingfrommetowe.com
[...] acquired PollDaddy this week. We recommended PollDaddy in a post on crowdsourcing back in August. We like both companies as they both offer free, quality online services that [...]