Crowdsourcing is a very interesting concept, which shows the big potential of innovating further the collaboration between the Web 2.0 style of community- meaning Facebook, Wikipedia Youtube etc. We all know about examples involving Crowdsourcing such as InnoCentive ,Wikipedia or Linux. But what a lot of us are unaware of is that almost every day we are part of a crowdsourcing projects! How so? Take for example, Google, which has been named the biggest secret crowdsourcing platform. It is secret because every day people contribute to its content without even realising. Take for example Google search. So the results that come up once you type something depend on the popularity of a website and its content that is related to what you have typed in. Furthermore, you have a lot of crowdsourcing projects within Google that you might have not realised give you the opportunity to crowdsource information. For example, Google translate. When you type something for translation and it translates content for you, in the down right corner you have the option to correct the translation, as shown below.
This crowdsourcing is aimed at improving the content with the knowledge of the platforms’ users.
Furthermore, let`s take into consideration another activity we do really often which could be described as another crowdsourcing project: writing reviews. In the case of Google plus, which gives you the opportunity to look at the profile of a restaurant for ex.Vapiano Rotterdam Plaza. On the restaurant’s page there is a section, as you can see below, which shows you ratings and reviews about the place.
There you can also write your own review and comment, again taking part in a crowdsourcing.
Another crowdsourcing project of Google would be the Google Map Maker. The presumption is that there is always something to be improved when it comes to Maps and you can contribute to this development through the platform.
The snapshot on the left-hand side shows you how it would look like when someone adds a new place, the status of his/her update. On the right-hand side you can see how you can comment on this new edition, share your opinion as to whether the newly added location is correct or not.
In conclusion, taking aside the many crowdsourcing projects out there, we should consider also some of the successful crowdsourcing business models. Some of them are InnoCentive, Linux, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, E-bay, Wikipedia and many more that are powered by crowdsourcing and its advantages. Therefore, I believe that behind crowdsourcing there is a lot of potential and it could add value to a lot of companies If they would like to explore its benefits.
References
Google.com, (2015). Google Map Maker. [online] Available at: https://www.google.com/mapmaker
Google+, V. (2015). Vapiano Rotterdam Plaza – About – Google+. [online] Plus.google.com. Available at: https://plus.google.com/111668239942523542713/about
MakeUseOf, (2015). 7 Google Crowdsourcing Projects That Help Us Today. [online] Available at: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-google-crowdsourcing-projects-help-us-today/
