Loose Knots

Yesterday I had a nice long chat with Nova Spivak, the chief of Radar Networks, which has developed the first commercial application for the so-called semantic Web. After he walked me through the site (via Glance, a Web-Ex-y kind of thing), we agreed that it would make for a nifty place to host a crowdsourcing group. I'll begin exploring it later today, and over the next few weeks everyone who identified themselves as being interested in crowdsourcing research will receive an invite to join the group. More soon ...

Comments

[Alan]

Here is a great post from Unit Structures. Although the focus is on beacon, I think the approach and insights apply equally to aspects of CS!

http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/11/facebooks-beacon-and-boundary-states.html

Alan

[Alan]

Here is a great list. Examples of Intermediary Platforms & Services from Open Innovators.
http://www.openinnovators.net/list-open-innovation-crowdsourcing-examples/

Alan

[Alan]

Yet another very well researched list:
Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

Alan

[ankara oto kiralama]

Very Nice topic thanx a lot (:

[Ryan McKenzie]

Hi Jeff
I'd be really interested in joining the crowdsourcing research group when you get it started, please email me if you can extend an invitation. Thanks very much.

[Alan]

Some interesting commentary about creating un-paid economic value, up-scale hobnobbing as a new trend and bundling tech, data and CS.

Ludo-capitalism and metanomics
http://alexreid.typepad.com/digital_digs/2007/11/ludo-capitalism.html

Social Networking with the Elite
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/nov2007/id20071114_257766.htm

TomTom and Vodafone crowdsource traffic information
http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2007/11/tomtom-and-voda.html

Alan

[Alan]

Ten million dollars are up for grabs for crowd-developed, open source software developers. This neatly demonstrates two emerging ways of doing things which will have ramifications far beyond the computer industry.
http://techlun.ch/2007/11/16/google-goes-crowdsourcing-for-an-iphone-killer/

[Alan]

Threadless up-date:$600,000 to $15 Million in 2007
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_48/b4060074.htm

Former UT football player launches Internet startup
An interesting new-media concept, crowdsourcing?:
http://www.voicesheardmedia.com/

Alan

[Lena West]

I'd like to be part of the crowdsourcing research group and I'd also like to interview you for a major online publication.

Can you shoot me an email?

Thanks,

Lena

[Russell Kord]

First, congratulations on the safe arrival of your new son. Its quite a while since I shared any thoughts about crowdsourcing with you.

The rants of a year back have been tempered by the reality of dealing with the effects of crowdsourcing
on a daily basis in my small stockphoto production business.

A year or more down the road the implosion of stock photo prices has not yet happened. The millions of potential stock shooters working for nothing hav'nt appeared. Photography created by crowdsourcers has been predictable and adequate at best. There is a low price market for it, and some money to be made by those doing the algromeration. But it has'nt put me out of business. Chiefly because the quality just is'nt there.

I wonder if it ever will be? What will the place of the enthusiastic amateur be in the stock photo business?
In the end will new talent migrate out of crowdsourcing for peanuts as soon as it is recognized, leaving the whole sector as a bargain basement of adequate images?

Maybe not enough time has passed to see the full extent of crowdsourcing and how deep are the long term effects of this process.

For now the iStockers are still out there shooting images for a buck, but on the eve of the deepest recession the USA has seen in half a century or more, the sky has not fallen in on professional stock photographers.

A deep long lasting recession should see companies cut advertising and/or R&D budgets, thereby revealing further insights into crowdsourcing's likely place in
our little planet's economy.

Maybe then we'll see crowdsourcing take over the world.

Or not.

[Alan]

158,000 strong crowd expected to rank system.
PaGaLGuY.com launches India's Largest B-school Rankings initiative

http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/education/200711215753.htm

Alan

[Daren C. Brabham]

Good to hear from you again, Russell.

You have a citation in my forthcoming article, too:

"In other ways, though, crowdsourcing necessarily involves casualties, as any shift in production will. iStockphoto, for instance, has crippled long-time stock photographers, whose prices—hundreds or thousands of dollars for image rights—were necessary to cover the cost of their equipment, travel, and film processing. As photographer Russell Kord laments on the crowdsourcing blog, “digital cameras have taken away any skill necessary to expose a decent image, composition is a matter of opinion, and distribution [e.g., through iStockphoto] is now cheap and easy” (Howe, 2006c, Comments section, 43). Because of this willingness for amateur photographers to “dump” their work on iStockphoto for next to nothing, professional stock photographers are becoming obsolete. The tragic tale in this loss of jobs is the last tail of an increasing obsolescence of the industrial economy as a whole, and the diffusion of technology (like the digital camera), spread of expert knowledge (via the Web), and our discovery of value in amateurs can be seen as refreshing and liberating in its own way. On the micro-level, crowdsourcing is ruining careers. On the macro-level, though, crowdsourcing is reconnecting workers with their work and taming the giants of big business by reviving the importance of the consumer in the design process. "

[Alan]

Here is an international list of peer to peer money lending/borrowing sites. It looks like this trend is blossoming. Of course we all know that money will never grow on trees! Alan
• Smava
• elolly.de
• PPdai
• Circle Lending
• Lendary
• Boober
• CommunityLend
• Peermint
• Lending Club
• Wiseclerk.com
• Fairrates
• Nexx
• GlobeFunder

[Alan]

Here is a paper worth looking at:
Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship by Danah Boyd.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

“Just in case” you have not caught this series on CS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DAeChPPxME

And here is an interesting look at social networks in the work place. What would the chart look like for CS?
http://collabatwork.com/?p=83

Is Google CS?
http://www.google.com/experimental/a840e102.html

Read/Write Web thinks not!
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/voting_experiment_google_sneez.php

Alan

[LukePDQ]

Hey Jeff.
Happy New Year to you and yours.
Just dropped by to see what's happening here.
I would definitely be interesting joining the group looking at Nova Spivak's Twine application.
This is going to be a killer app in the business world if it lives up to its promised functionality.
Cheers.

[prefabrik evler]

I'd like to be part of the crowdsourcing research group and I'd also like to interview you for a major online publication.

http://www.aryol.com.tr/ofisler.html