crowdsourcing
By ET
I recently used the service at rentacoder.com, an online market place for programmers. I posted my need and my maximum bid of $30. After 30 minutes, I got the first response requesting more information, I modified my post and clarified the requirement. Within 24 hours, I got 3 bids and 10 more responses. One programmer even put up his prototype code for download. It was a very pleasant experience to me.
I write programs myself, but I can’t possibly figure out all the issues I may have in my projects, in addition, the project I posted may cost me 2-3 days to complete. The market place offers a cheap way to get my job done easily. I wrote a post long time ago on Amazon’s Mechanical Turks it is similar in that it offers people a way to contribute some work and be paid. These tasks are usually very hard to tackle by the posters, but can be a piece of cake for people who know how to do it.
I always dreamed of an ideal market that people who happen to have some information can help clueless people on some projects. Think about it, there are many possible ways you may need some information, and someone out there know the answer. For example, if you want to know how it feels like to go through the PhD process at Sloan, I can be the best person to ask. Another example is that if I plan to drive from Boston to Chicago, I may need information where to make my stops on the way and check out beautiful places to see, if someone happens to spend two days to do the research and have some experience driving this route, I’m willing to pay him/her for the informatoin. Yet another example: TIME magazine need a photograph of Tsinghua University, I happen to have a lot of good quality photos on my hard disk, there just lacks a way to get us connected. All these can be done by the concept of “crowdsourcing”.
Wired magazine has a new article discussing this problem: The Rise of Crowd, I feel very excited to read about this article as it shows some exciting examples of companies moving toward the “economy of the crowd”, and the enabler is, you guessed it, Information Technology.
