Crowdsourcing

Birth of a Meme

A lot can happen in a week. Nine days ago Scott Laine, a colleague of mine in the New York office of Wired snapped this shot off his browser:

At that time, Google returned three hits from a search for "crowdsourcing." One linked back to the Web site created by the illustrator on the story, James Jean. Another linked to an interview with Steve Silberman, a fellow contributing editor at the magazine. The third linked to a comment by VC Steve Jurvetson. Sending me the Websnap, Scott said I'd want it as a historical document. I was skeptical: The June issue of Wired had just hit the stands, and while I was proud of the story, I hardly expected the explosion of interest that quickly followed. A google search now produces 182,000 returns.The volume of mentions is less significant than the nature of those mentions: "crowdsourcing" now has its own Wikipedia entry, and seems to have been adopted by Valleywag as a euphemism for click-slavery. And if we need yet more evidence that the cycle of adoption to commercialization to satirization has hit light speed, Supr.c.ilio.us gives the term new meaning in this entry. As mentions of crowdsourcing really only picked up steam this past Thursday, I'd estimate the lifespan of this particular cycle at 48 hours.

Fortunately, the subject is receiving more serious treatment as well. I'm going offline for a few days for a much-needed fly-fishing trip in British Columbia, where I've come to work on my next Wired story. Next week I'll cover a few of the blogs and Web sites that are exploring crowdsourcing concepts in greater earnestness. There's nothing wrong with a buzzword if it actually signifies a meaningful trend or development; it's my belief crowdsourcing does just that.

Crowdsouring: Where You Least Expect It

I'd developed the hypothesis that crowdsourcing would be unlikely to affect artistic mediums that rely heavily on a single artist's vision. Thus, while it made sense to me that 20,000 fans of Showtime's   The L Word could create a viable "fanisode," as scripted television is generally a collaborative art form, I'd come to doubt we'd soon see the crowd produce a good novel or work of visual art. How wrong I was. An MFA candidate at UCLA's Design and Media dept. named Aaron Koblin used Amazon's Mechanical Turk to create The Sheep Market. I don't want to spoil the elegance of its conception and realization by giving away too much, but let's just say we've found another application for Mechanical Turk. This is no glib celebration of the creativity in the crowd, though there's an element of that there, but a critique of "the massive and insignificant role each plays as part of the whole," according to Koblin's notes on the project. Sounds right to me. MT has the potential to become a very powerful tool, but the thought of Turkers bent over their home computers clicking their way through some skull-crushingly rote task sounds downright Dickensian.

Rent A Coder

A friend pointed out to me that I should have mentioned the online labor marketplace Rent A Coder in my Wired article. Rent A Coder is exactly what it sounds like, a service that allows programmers from around the world to bid on any bit of high-tech piecework posted on the company’s site. It’s also an excellent example of how effective crowdsourcing networks are in tech fields, where people can work – indeed flourish – outside the framework of the firm or academic institution.

According to the company’s own data, over 140,000 programmers and 55,000 buyers use the service, and roughly 11,000 projects are completed every month. Payment is held in escrow until the client is happy with the product. Most of the jobs presumably consist of rote programming tasks, but any way you cut it this represents a considerable volume of commissions that otherwise would have gone to professional firms through traditional channels.

So can Rent A Coder produce quality equaling what a professional might deliver? The answer could well be no. The next question – raised by an article in British newspaper The Independent – is "Does that matter?" In the piece, by Clint Witchalls, the author used Rent A Coder to find someone to design his Web site. He received 63 bids before settling on a coder named Luke in New Mexico that completed the job for $60, and even through in a tutorial to boot.

Witchalls then went to a London-based Web design agency to see what they charge to create a comparable Web site. “’The simplicity of the site’s design and functionality suggests that it was delivered on a very small budget,’” the agency’s marketing manager sniffed. “Our author clients generally invest between pounds 1,000 and pounds 5,000 [roughly $2,000 to $10,000] for … their personal Websites.”

Witchalls spent about $150 for the development and hosting of his site, which is a little less than 2 percent of the larger figure quoted by the London firm. His site won’t win any Webbies, he concedes, but it suits his purposes just fine. That disparity in cost is about as pronounced as that between iStockPhoto’s licenses and that offered by traditional stock houses, and it’s not too off from the difference between producing a half-hour of scripted network TV and producing 30 minutes of VH1’s Web Junk 20. I’m hoping to use this site to gather more examples, and eventually tease out the common elements among these otherwise disparate cases.

Mission Statement

Hi. My name is Jeff Howe. I’m a contributing editor to Wired Magazine, and I recently published an article about a phenomenon I call Crowdsourcing. The article explored the ways in which the amateur – defined as scientists, writers, photographers or anyone else working outside an organizational structure like a firm – has become an increasingly significant economic force in our world. This Web site will primarily continue that mission. Journalists regularly gather far more material than they can use. This was especially true in this case, and so the Web site will allow me to cast some light on the many fascinating people and ideas that didn’t make it into the article.

However, Crowdsourcing.net will take a very different approach to the subject. In the article I wanted simply to show how companies are increasingly taking advantage of a global populace that’s getting more intelligent and more productive and more connected. I declined to pass judgment over whether crowdsourcing is a good or bad thing; nor did I forecast how it might all shake out.

On Crowdsourcing.net I'll encourage the expression of opinion, both foolish and otherwise, starting now: I believe that crowdsourcing’s long-term promise is immeasurable, but I have considerable misgivings about its short-term applications and its implications for the people – like stock photographers – who will be adversely affected by the crowd.

Finally, I’d like Crowdsourcing.net to be more of a forum than a bully pulpit. To that end, the Web site will function more like a single-subject journal than a blog. I intend to solicit and accept submissions to the site. I won’t guarantee publication, but I’ll promise to exercise as light an editorial hand as possible in my selections. If it adds to the discussion without insulting or offending any party, I’ll publish it. The result should be something of a Speaker’s Corner. At first I’ll probably be the only one speaking, pounding on the podium for attention, but with any luck a loud and raucous crowd will clamor to be heard.