How is crowdsourcing changing the way that companies approach creating content?

Firstly What is crowdsourcing? Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services if a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the internet. In the article by Jeff Howe, he explains how much using the media or crowdsourcing is beneficial in terms of increasing demand also getting a certain product out there for the public to see.  “Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost of barriers that once separated amateurs from professional. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a marketer their efforts, as smart companies in Industries disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd” (Howe). What the quote means to me is that companies in different avenues can use crowdsourcing in a mo0re beneficial way for them to outsource a product new or old.  More exposure and more demand is what these companies benefit from.

Crowdsourcing is the attaining of information, media, and laborers from data that has been submitted online through the internet, smartphone applications and social media. This trend is becoming increasingly popular by both large and small companies in an approach to create content. According to Larry Huston, the vice president of knowledge and innovation at a company called Procter & Gamble, “we’re talking about bringing people in from outside and involving them in this broadly creative, collaborative process” (Huston, Howe 2006). While company heads such as Larry Huston say things like that, they know the sharing of creative content online will never stop, so why not take advantage of it? More and more users are creating content online than not it seems, whether it be contributing to a feed like Twitter and Instagram or creating an entire brand through Youtube videos or blogs. Companies such as Procter & Gamble know the difference between obtaining creative content from highly paid professionals and willing amateurs. “There were professionals who produced content and were paid for their trouble. And there were amateurs who consumed content and paid for the privilege” (Mcardle 2010). For one, crowdsourcing from people who contribute to online platforms is cheaper, more convenient and less time consuming. Why would a company waist time trying to find a professional which is more expensive, when they could give a random individual “the honor” in being involved in their creative process for sometimes 99% less pay. Not only are several creative professionals’ jobs at risk, but also the research jobs behind these companies that are supposed to seek out these creative professionals. Furthermore, crowdsourcing is another form of a network and shows how individual to individual connections are networks as well. Creative content is more easily accessible than ever because people no longer just consume media and leave its content to the professionals, anyone and everyone could contribute to it and they are! We all are!

Crowdsourcing is the practice of getting information by volunteering the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet. According to an article on wired.com, It’s been used to come up with new business ideas, solutions to social problems, funding new products, mapping environmental disasters, identifying potholes that need to be repaired and even getting someone to wait in line for your new iPhone. An example of a popluar site that uses crowdsourcing is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is information gathered by people on the internet. Crowdsourcing is changing methods of labor on the internet because there are so many people online, you do not need a specific person to do the labor you need to get done. There is more freedom with workers as well, meaning they do not have to stick with one company, and they can gather information for multiple companies.

The future of crowdsourcing is still changing and there is no limit to where it can go, it terms of the internet growing.

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The buzz word, crowdsourcing, is a great method of distributing a company’s labor throughout the internet. In a WIRED article by Dustin Haisler, the author explains the concept behind crowdsourcing and the many forms it comes in. Crowdsourcing isn’t just outsourcing company tasks such as formatting some rows and columns in an Excel sheet to someone out in South America or asking someone from India to transfer words from a PDF to Word. By Haisler’s example, crowdsourcing isn’t something new or revolutionary, it’s something that is predefined in nature, something called Emergent Behavior. Haisler states “We can observe emergent behavior in everything from ant colonies to the largest of cities. The premise of emergent behavior is that we are all connected through networks (both online & offline) and that we naturally self-organize across our networks to form higher levels of order.” The existence of crowdsourcing also comes in different purposes. Take a look at services like Kickstarter, a website for individuals, groups or organizations to advertise their ideas and collect donators, or backers, to fund their projects. Even places like Fiverr, offer a platform for anyone to advertise their skills and take on jobs such as designing a website, creating a company logo or even voice acting for a small buck. The emergence of crowdsourcing can be seen as a positive thing as it gives anyone the chance to offer their skills and time to others while getting paid for it. Although this is true, this also comes at a cost to professionals in the industry.

Megan McArdle and Jeff Howe from The Atlantic and WIRED respectively, have gone into how those working in the professional field are affected by the boom of crowdsourcing. McArdle shares the story of Charles Murray, a writer who had complained about the New York Times paying him only $75 for his op-ed contributions. The payment might be low but it’s probably a good amount given the prices from Murray’s competitors. As McArdle’s article points out, there are writers like Murray “who would gladly write for the Times op-ed page for free.” Furthermore, McArdle states the New York Times “could easily stop paying for op-ed submissions and it would have no difficulty filling its op-ed page every morning.” But why is that? It’s because of it’s popularity and prevalence in people’s everyday lives. Think about places like YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia. These platforms would never exist if it weren’t for the people who upload and contribute willingly. Wikipedia, known to many, houses thousands maybe millions of articles, all contributed by its users who simply love the platform and are willing to upkeep and provide labor without pay. YouTube and Flickr emerged in popularity because of the convenience of sharing content with others. All this, is the same for the New York Times’ op-ed page. There are plenty of users and readers who love the platform that would gladly freely offer their own submissions just to be featured on the page.

Howe’s article points out the competition professional photographers face with the emergence of crowdsourcing. Mark Harmel is a freelance photographer from California who had suffered the same revelation as Murray. He was given a task to photograph sick patients for a project led by Claudia Menashe of the National Health Museum in Washington, DC. After negotiations and discounts, Harmel would profit about $600 for his four camera shots – that’s $150 per photo! Unfortunately for Harmel, the project lead from DC discovered iStockPhoto, a platform for freelance and amateur photographers like Harmel to upload and sell their stock photos. With over 22,000 contributors on the site, each photo charges between $1 and $5. And as Menashe would describe it, the website had “images at very affordable prices”. Menashe bought and used 56 photos from iStockPhoto for about $1 each that same day to complete her project.

It comes as no surprise why professionals like Murray or Harmel are upset about crowdsourcing being a thing. Harmel would sell a portfolio of 100 photographs in 2000 for about $69,000 but with iStockPhoto and other sites offering their low rates, it leaves people like Harmel questioning, “how can I compete with a dollar?” Would it be best to just join in as well?

How is crowdsourcing changing the way that companies approach creating content?

The way crowdsurfing is changing the way companies approach creating content is by communicating with people from various background that can come together for the greater good. We can see this in the article “The Rise of Crowdsurfing” by Gregg Segal where one women named Menashe decided to use preexisting images in stock to help with her project. “In October 2004, she ran across a stock photo collection by Mark Harmel, a freelance photographer living in Manhattan Beach, California. Harmel, whose wife is a doctor, specializes in images related to the health care industry.” Menashe used a freelancer which we see today being promoted such as the subway station to give others the opportunity to work for other companies at a more affordable price. The idea of freelancer is used a lot today due to the accessibility of technology and the high expenses of living. Many young adults fresh out of college tend to freelance to get money. Crowdsourcing helps with this because it gives many the opportunity to find work and helps smaller companies who don’t have much resources to hire people as well.

I’ve been a competitive gamer learning graphic design for several years. As a result, I believe crowdsourcing is a good thing because you can get things done without having a degree to show for it. Crowdsourcing on social media is basically the crowd takes a seat as the both the product and the producer of the content. Compared to gaming, many people in the gaming community on twitter always ask for graphic artwork to display and or promote their brand. With this being said, crowdsourcing helps people without the career to get their work out there and promoted by others instead of paying a lot more money to get something similar. It is shown through the article that the crowd holds the keys to the future of the global innovation marketplace, and organizations need to embrace its potential to keep up in a fast-moving and ever-evolving global marketplace of ideas.

Crowdsourcing has been able to connect people from all parts of the internet and it seems to have been mainly a good thing. Like in the article ‘The Rise of Crowdsourcing’ there are photographers who don’t need to apply for a job, they can simply create for other people. For example, if someone wanted a high resolution of a tree, a customer can pay an armature to do it. In a sense, it really benefits both parties as the amature can have a chance to shine and the person paying can pay less than what they would normally pay a professional. personally, I have had a great experience with crowdsourcing. I paid this person to do a custom computer wallpaper and i was very satisfied with it. What this shows is that we are giving people with a niche skill  set the opportunity to do what they want for money. Without crowd sourcing, these people would not be doing what they love or would have a harder time trying to make a living. The photographer in the first article said he has noticed he got less money for the photos he was taking. I think it is because there are people who noticed they could pay less for a photo of similar quality but also the fact that there are more people willing to take the job and thus higher demand means they can be paid less.

The only downside I see to this is that this eliminates all sorts of relationships. Lets say i hire someone to build me a web page, if they come into an office every day, there is a sense of a relationship between the web builder and the boss. But if I hire someone through the internet from three hundred miles away, if I don’t need them, I could just tell them they’re fired without giving them a severance package. Like in the third article, the guy name Charles Murray got paid 75 dollars to do a writing. I think it has to do with how with the rise of companies like ‘fiver’ and  ‘Upwork’ the NYT was able to have a huge amount of contributing writers; all ranging from good to professional. So since they had access to them, Murrays wasn’t as important to the NYT. If he wanted to leave, the NYT wouldn’t care.

In summary, crowdsourcing opened a lot of people to the opportunity to do what they love without having a reputation, but it has also allowed for larger companies to take advantage of these same people to cut costs wherever they can.

The first article, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”, is about the first beginnings of examples that created and started the action of Crowdsourcing. It also speaks about the different ways that crowdsourcing was put into work in its earliest uses with minor companies. Crowdsourcing seems to be utilized more prominently these days especially with the advance in technology. It seems to be changing our methods of labor on the Internet because now companies are using crowdsourcing for their customers to access their products. 

In the second article,  Shirky argues “that what looked like a fact about human nature turns out to be merely an artifact of limited 20th century media technologies. Because only a small group of professional writers had access to the technologies of mass publication, it seemed obvious that writing for publication was a job for professionals. And because the rest of us had never participated in the process, it was widely assumed we didn’t want to. We now know that assumption was wrong. Many ordinary people jump at the chance to be producers as well as consumers.” This entire quote is the basic purpose that there doesn’t just have to be a professional who’s a journalist with a degree. But rather than any individual can go ahead and use their own platform to create discussions with others. 

In the last article, “The future of Crowdsourcing, Why the crowd is changing and What you can do about it”, it speaks about how the growth of crowdsourcing is changing it’s own future and what can most likely be expected because of it. The article also goes into different steps a person could take to go through their own crowdsourcing experience as well.

I’ve spent the past few years off of Facebook after I canceled my account to escape the anxiety that I felt it was giving me.  I only rejoined in the past few weeks because my community board only meets on a Facebook page for this rural Florida town that I own property in.  I deliberately added contact information that only friends could read, to know where to reach me more consistently.  I don’t plan on adding friends on the platform because I will not be posting there or participating in online dialogue unless it deals directly with my community board.

Living without Google is virtually impossible.  I was using google before smartphones became popular because It was the easiest yellow pages anyone could use.   After some time, I figured out that you can probably find the answers to some of life’s biggest secrets by paying attention to the common search results.  I tried to not use google for the week but I couldn’t because plenty of research is required when enrolled in 5 classes.  The same was true with avoiding amazon.  It may not be as difficult to avoid purchases but with so many classes and books to order; I couldn’t not use amazon.