What Is Crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing is one of the fastest-growing forms of online work. More and more companies are looking for the answer to the question, “What is crowdsourcing?” By making use of this fast and efficient way of completing a task, companies, research groups and other organizations can get work done much more quickly than was possible before. For many kinds of tasks, crowdsourcing is the most efficient way to get them done.
What is Crowdsourcing, and How Is It Used?
Crowdsourcing is the technique of completing a task by having the work done by a large group of unassociated individuals, known as the “crowd,” rather than by a single person or a small, close-knit work group. Instead of assigning a task to someone who is responsible for completing the whole task, the work is instead broken down into various pieces, each of which is then completed by a member of the crowd. These pieces are then returned to the original organization that requested the work and reassembled into the final output. Crowdsourcing is also an effective technique for academic researchers who are looking for a broad pool of research subjects. There are a number of different websites, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, that make the process of creating a task and finding a crowd much easier.
The Pros and Cons of Crowdsourcing
After answering the question of what is crowdsourcing, an organization should assess whether or not this method is the best approach for its particular needs. For example, if an organization has many repetitive jobs that require sorting through large masses of data, crowdsourcing can get these jobs done much more quickly by having many people working on the task simultaneously. Having hundreds or even thousands of people sorting through data lets the job get done quickly and efficiently. However, if a job requires a certain level of expertise and subjective judgment, it may be harder to find a large enough crowd to do the work. In this case, it is better to use more traditional methods of completing the work.
Knowing more about crowdsourcing lets you decide whether this method is appropriate for your particular tasks. In many cases, using crowdsourcing can help you complete tasks far more quickly and efficiently than with more traditional methods. Even if you still have tasks that cannot be completed with crowdsourcing, you may still be able to find some uses for this exciting new technique.
Other Information from Kristen Bradley
- What is CrowdSourcing: http://www.crowdsource.com/what-is-crowdsourcing
- Amazon Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
Kristen Bradley is a specialist for CrowdSource.com, a leading site on the web that delivers highly scalable solutions to enterprise clients globally.
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