Though crowd sourcing is not a new concept, it has definitely flourished in recent times as more and more individuals and companies move towards the internet for social media, shopping, and advertising. Many companies have used the internet as an advertising resource for many years, but as social media and networking has reached global heights through means such as Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress, the electronic interaction between companies and consumer has become an invaluable marketing resource.
Crowd sourcing has become one of the most significant of these communications, because it allows public interaction and involvement in company projects and decisions. This can be extremely productive for both consumers and the company as products that the general customer wants to see come to life, and companies can feel secure releasing the product as they already know they have a strong consumer basis to work with. Basically, crowd sourcing is a win-win situation.
The way crowd sourcing works depends on what type of crowd sourcing you are working with, as they vary significantly. There are crowd sourcing knowledge based projects such as Wikipedia.org, crowd funding, crowd design projects such as the Linux distribution Ubuntu, crowd sourcing based citizen science projects, and crowd voting where consumers vote on what product they want to see released from the company. Generally they all contain the same concept, the community influences their results and/or products. In all actuality, we see crowd sourcing on a nearly daily basis; from community based distributions to American Idol.
Crowd sourcing remains a generally flexible word, and can encompass anything that requires community interaction. The community will be interested in participating for many reasons such as recognition, rewards, experience, exposure, or just for personal enjoyment. It is not hard to find participants for crowd sourcing, especially if your project is not too specific. The benefits are numerous, ranging from minimal expense, a general idea of the public’s desires, opportunity to achieve unique and creative results, and for exposure of your own company or product line.
Whether you sell a global product, or manage a small time video blogging website, crowd sourcing offers a lot of opportunity to you or your company. In addition to being a win-win project, it also allows a lot more enjoyment of and recognition for your products from the general population. Next time you decide to release a product, or experience a severe creativity block that keeps you from designing your next product, turn to crowd sourcing. If played right, you will find the results beyond satisfying.
