A Crowdsourcing Strategy That Makes Sense

Now here’s a crowdsourcing strategy that makes sense. The CASH Music initiative last week released two new apps that let artists give away music to fans that help spread the word via Twitter or Facebook.

Called Tweet-for-Track and FBConnect-to-Track, the “mini-apps” allow artists to offer a free download to any fan that either forwards a Twitter link or friends the artist on Facebook.

The idea came from cellist Zoe Keating, who drafted the basic idea and reached out to CASH Music for help. The Twitter version was built in time for SXSW, which she used to promote her upcoming album “Into the Trees.”

The apps are open source, meaning artists can download them for free and build on them in any way they like. From the Cash Music blog post:

You can require the user to tweet a specific phrase, follow you or not, and the download can be sent via straight http or secured using Amazon S3. All you need is a Twitter account and a webhost that can deal with PHP.

The Facebook version came about through artist Brendan Benson. Again, from the blog:

It combines Facebook’s standard “fanbox” with a simple Facebook connect implementation that lets a visitor securely verify their fan status and claim a download. Some of the benefits of this approach are subtle. The download will work for all fans, old or new, so it builds community. Facebook automatically sends a “Soandso became a fan of…” message, so we don’t need to force the user to post a message on his or her wall — but we can ask them nicely and provide a simple link. The entire process happens on one page so it feels very light.
To Learn More Click Here

SWIFT Bank Network Taps Crowdsourcing

Staid bankers are embracing the latest collaborative tools to drive innovation. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), a global organization that handles an average of 15 million standardized financial transactions such as wire transfers every day for more than 8,000 banks, is spearheading a drive to “inject an innovation culture not only at SWIFT but the financial community as a whole,” by collaborating on new e-banking solutions and working more closely with start-ups, says Kosta Peric, head of innovation at SWIFT.

Since 1973, Brussels-based SWIFT has provided a shared worldwide data processing and communication link for the world’s banks, using a common language for international financial transactions. Its main function is to be a carrier of messages. It does not hold funds, manage accounts on behalf of customers, or store financial information on an ongoing basis. That said, SWIFT is increasingly taking on the role of a catalyst to bring the financial community together to work collaboratively on market practice, standards, and issues of mutual interest.

With that goal in mind, Peric is behind an online marketplace called Innotribe that went live on Feb. 11 and aims to leverage the collective creativity of the finance sector. The idea is not only to deliver on the traditional mission of lowering costs, reducing operational risk, and eliminating inefficiencies, but also to get creative about taking the sector into entirely new directions.

Innotribe is clearly not your father’s banking communications platform. Bankers who wish to submit their ideas for new products, services, or business processes (or enhancements to existing ones) can do so by signing in with a Facebook, Google, or Twitter account. They are greeted with the message “Remember, everyone is an innovator; and a crazy idea that works is not so crazy at all. Share with us your ideas, be they matter of fact or wildly aspirational.”

The site uses a cloud-based software application from Brightidea.com to collect, track, and manage ideas. It also allows those participating in the project to volunteer to work on particular projects and vote on which ideas should be considered for investment and developed to the proof-of-concept phase.

"What we are doing is enabling collaborative innovation," says Peric. That includes embracing crowdsourcing and mash-ups—technology approaches more often associated with start-ups targeting the under-30 crowd than staid bankers.

Peric and his five-person innovation team started out two-and-a-half years ago as a research and development unit. After little more than a year they began encouraging others inside SWIFT to collaborate on new projects. Teams of SWIFT employees were asked to solve particular problems. They were given one month to work on their ideas during their free time, such as lunch or coffee breaks. When the deadline arrived, the proposed solutions were passed to Peric's team. A jury of executives voted on which ideas they liked best. The winning ideas were then implemented on the company's time.

Based on the success of the in-house collaboration, SWIFT decided to involve the wider banking community. During its annual Sibos conference in Hong Kong last September some 6,000 delegates were asked to generate ideas in three different areas—crowdsourcing, mash-ups, and cloud computing, which allows the shifting of computing tasks and storage from local desktop PCs and company servers to remote systems across the Internet. About 500 people showed up to learn more. A core team of 40 delegates met for two hours a day during four days to flesh out concepts and develop pitches that were then delivered publicly to a jury.

One of the winning ideas is called "eMe," a cloud-based project that would allow banking customers to establish a digital lockbox with sensitive personal or business information, such as credit card numbers. Instead of having to type in the information each time a consumer or business makes a purchase, a code could be given to the digital lockbox. Click here to watch a video of the original eMe pitch. Another winning idea, with the working title "eBiz," involves creating a central electronic point where information could be retrieved by businesses about the status of shipped goods.

SWIFT is exploring the idea of co-investing in the development of the "eMe" and "eBiz" projects alongside some of the banks that are its clients. Working with startups is the next step. "We are not yet working with startups but we want to engage with them," says Peric. "It is very much in line with our open collaboration concept—there are lots of ideas out there that are relevant to the financial community so we want to make our SWIFT brand known in this context."

To help spread the word SWIFT has become a sponsor of a global competition called Innovate! 2010 launched by the Guidewire Group, a market intelligence and advisory firm, to identify and accelerate the world's 100 top technology, media, and telecommunications startups. (Click here to learn more about Innovate! 2010). Peric says he hopes to give at least one of the winning startups from the Innovate!2010 contest some exposure at SWIFT's next Sibos event, which will take place this October in Amsterdam.

Start-ups with technologies relevant to the financial industry should pitch directly to SWIFT or through the Innotribe Web site. "We guarantee the request will be acted upon," Peric says.
To Learn More Click Here

VCs bet on the spread of business crowdsourcing

Area venture capitalists are betting that crowdsourcing — the idea behind Wikipedia and open-source software — can penetrate some of the most staid industries: patent research and business-to-business credit checks.

Cortera Inc. of Quincy has raised more than $20 million from Volition Capital, whose managers believe the company can beat Dun & Bradstreet Corp. by sourcing credit-check data from myriad small to midsize businesses.

Meanwhile, Cambridge-based General Catalyst Partners is one of several outside investors that have put $3 million in total behind Article One Partners LLC, a New York startup that claims to have crowdsourced “the world’s largest patent research community” for collecting examples of patentable techniques and designs.

It’s a compelling case, said Choate Hall & Stewart LLP Partner Carlos Perez-Albuerne, particularly for finding “industry prior art” — designs or methods that haven’t become the subject of patent applications. “Usually the knowledge is in the minds of industry players, and typically it’s the hardest prior art to find,” he said.

Currently, law firms hire lawyers or patent agents to research industry prior art, and the search is limited to a particular firm’s or client’s networks, he said.

The business of credit background checks also is ripe for innovation, said General Partner Larry Cheng of Volition Capital, previously Fidelity Ventures, the venture investing arm of Fidelity Investments.

Currently, such credit checks are purveyed almost exclusively by The Dun & Bradstreet Corp. (NYSE: DNB), which solicits detailed accounts-receivable information from roughly 10,000 of the largest companies in the world, Cheng said. “If you are a smaller business and you’re not a customer of large companies, then how well you pay your bills is not reflected,” he said. “There’s this whole missing tier of millions of companies and their trade experiences that is not reflected in how business-scoring models are done today.”

Cortera, which has dual headquarters in Quincy and Boca Raton, Fla., launched in 2006 by using venture cash to buy a credit reports database from eCredit Inc. The company now has about 100 employees and is nearing profitability on projected 2010 revenue of between $10 million and $20 million, CEO Jim Swift said.

The startup has about 20,000 users, about 10 percent of whom pay for a premium service that provides more detailed credit analysis. Mayhew Steel Products Inc., a Turners Falls company that manufactures hand tools, is one of those 2,000 premium-service clients.

“What I’m looking for is to set up new customers,” accounts receivable manager Karen Allen said.

The company’s typical customer is a hardware store distributor. Big customers such as MSC Industrial Direct Co. (NYSE: MSM), Stanley Black & Decker Inc. (NYSE: SWK) and Sears Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: SHLD) are easy to approve for credit. “It’s the smaller ones that I’m more concerned about,” Allen said.

Dun & Bradstreet reports were able to provide information on those companies, but Cortera has them beat for ease of use, Allen said. “The simplicity is awesome,” she said. “I don’t have to skim through 30 pages of reports.”

Read more: VCs bet on the spread of business crowdsourcing - Boston Business Journal:

To Learn More Click Here

Funding those great ideas - finding cash for Innovation!

Funding for Innovation and new technology projects has always been an issue for large companies as budgets are put under pressure and the drive to continually reduce costs is maintained.

Typically companies have a ‘cookie jar’ where they keep some seed-corn funding available for new stuff or more usually things get funded by reducing spend in other areas.

I was talking to a few innovation practitioners across companies about funding and they all report a similar pattern to the one faced in Royal Mail when I headed up the Innovation team. There was a ‘plenty and famine’ pattern with the gap between the two being around 18 to 24 months - money would be put into Innovation and new things, typically CEO or Marketing led, and then taken away again - typically finance or HR led.

Last week I came across an interesting concept, which was Crowd Funding of start up projects. There is a website www.kickstarter.com where people across the world can invest small amounts of money in start-up projects that they are interested in. For your investment you don’t get any equity but the investee provides some sort of tangible benefit that costs very little. I invested $10 in three girls from New York who have a great idea for a cake decorating company, in return for my $10 I get emails that tell me how they are getting on an a recipe a month for 12 months.

As I got involved in the site I started thinking that this might be an interesting model for companies to get seed-corn funding from their employees. The concept is that ideas would be put forward and employees asked to put a small amount of investment - probably £1 - £5 - in the projects that they thought would ‘fly’. This concept brings together a couple of interesting ideas - the Wisdom of Crowds ideas where the mass of the company will tell you which they think is a good idea by putting their cash behind it, and secondly they will be engaged in the success of their chosen projects. Secondly, the concept of crowd sourcing of ideas and knowledge.

The idea concept would need to be fleshed out to a point where it could be taken forward with a small amount, typically £10,000 or less, of cash. The idea would be put on a web site, either owned by the company or a third party, or made available to the workforce. The amount required would be shown and people would then choose to invest or not - no money would be taken until the target had been achieved. This gets round the problem of having to give money back etc. and reduces the possibility of fraud etc.

Having this sort of initiative in place would also, I believe, encourage people to put their own ideas in to the mix, as it provides a way of giving permission to people to ‘do’ something, particularly if they see other people who they know get funding.

The bit I haven’t worked out yet and would like some thoughts on is how to do the ‘pay-back’ - what would be the equivalent of the recipes? One idea could be that the ‘investors’ would be entered into some sort of competition maybe for a prize draw at the end of the year.

Clearly there are a lot of questions that need answers and things to sort out but it seems a great way a getting that much needed seed-corn funding as well as engaging with the workforce in a positive way.

If you are interested in exploring further please get in touch - or if you have ideas about how to ‘pay-back’ I would be interested in your views.
To Learn More Click Here

VCs seek crowdsourcing opportunities in business

Area venture capitalists are betting that crowdsourcing — the idea behind Wikipedia and open-source software — can penetrate some of the most staid industries: patent research and business-to-business credit checks.

Cortera Inc. of Quincy has raised more than $20 million from Volition Capital, whose managers believe the company can beat Dun & Bradstreet Corp. by sourcing credit-check data from myriad small to midsize businesses.

Meanwhile, Cambridge-based General Catalyst Partners is one of several outside investors that have put $3 million in total behind Article One Partners LLC, a New York startup that claims to have crowdsourced “the world’s largest patent research community” for collecting examples of patentable techniques and designs.

It’s a compelling case, said Choate Hall & Stewart LLP Partner Carlos Perez-Albuerne, particularly for finding “industry prior art” — designs or methods that haven’t become the subject of patent applications. “Usually the knowledge is in the minds of industry players, and typically it’s the hardest prior art to find,” he said.

Currently, law firms hire lawyers or patent agents to research industry prior art, and the search is limited to a particular firm’s or client’s networks, he said.

The business of credit background checks also is ripe for innovation, said General Partner Larry Cheng of Volition Capital, previously Fidelity Ventures, the venture investing arm of Fidelity Investments.

Currently, such credit checks are purveyed almost exclusively by The Dun & Bradstreet Corp. (NYSE: DNB), which solicits detailed accounts-receivable information from roughly 10,000 of the largest companies in the world, Cheng said. “If you are a smaller business and you’re not a customer of large companies, then how well you pay your bills is not reflected,” he said. “There’s this whole missing tier of millions of companies and their trade experiences that is not reflected in how business-scoring models are done today.”

Cortera, which has dual headquarters in Quincy and Boca Raton, Fla., launched in 2006 by using venture cash to buy a credit reports database from eCredit Inc. The company now has about 100 employees and is nearing profitability on projected 2010 revenue of between $10 million and $20 million, CEO Jim Swift said.

The startup has about 20,000 users, about 10 percent of whom pay for a premium service that provides more detailed credit analysis. Mayhew Steel Products Inc., a Turners Falls company that manufactures hand tools, is one of those 2,000 premium-service clients.

“What I’m looking for is to set up new customers,” accounts receivable manager Karen Allen said.

The company’s typical customer is a hardware store distributor. Big customers such as MSC Industrial Direct Co. (NYSE: MSM), Stanley Black & Decker Inc. (NYSE: SWK) and Sears Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: SHLD) are easy to approve for credit. “It’s the smaller ones that I’m more concerned about,” Allen said.

Dun & Bradstreet reports were able to provide information on those companies, but Cortera has them beat for ease of use, Allen said. “The simplicity is awesome,” she said. “I don’t have to skim through 30 pages of reports.”

To Learn More Click Here

Crowdsourced Art

Aaron Koblin uses micro-payments to crowdsource his art projects. Here's a description of one of his projects (an interactive version of the above image is here):

Ten Thousand Cents is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon's Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100. The work is presented as an interactive/video piece with all 10,000 parts being drawn simultaneously. The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, "crowdsourcing," "virtual economies," and digital reproduction.

To Learn More Click Here

The search for the world's greatest salesperson "Are You The One"?

WPP's Ogilvyone climbs on board crowdsourcing with the search for the world's greatest salesperson.

To Learn More Click Here

Japan gets into crowdsourcing with Samurai Factory

Samurai Factory Debuts Manga Ad Crowdsourcing Service

Web services company Samurai Factory announced the release of Manga Ad, an advertising service to crowdsource design requests for clients desiring a manga style for their ad campaign.

Manga Ad will make appeals for ad designs for prospective clients, and designs selected will receive Ninja Points for use in the Ninja Tools family of services as well as compete with each other for prize money based on the ranking of click-through rate (CTR) for selected designs. Prize money will vary based on the scale of the campaign.

Company President Kenji Ito comments, “We have found that having manga designs in advertising campaigns create a deeper connection between the user and the product or service being advertised. This has been clearly demonstrated to us through testing manga/non-manga versions to our users and the manga versions have been much more successful.”

Ito also believes that aspiring manga artists will welcome the chance for more freelance work. “By crowdsourcing the ad designs to our users, we feel we are providing an opportunity for manga artists to hone their skills while being able to earn some income in the process.”

The initial release of Manga Ad (manga-ad.shinobi.jp) will be limited to campaigns restricted to Japan, but plans include expanding coverage to global campaigns in the near future.

Samurai Factory is a leading provider of web services in Japan, with a total of over two million registered Ninja Tools users.
To Learn More Click Here
samurai-factory.jp

Dish Network Looking to the Crowd

By STUART ELLIOTT

An initiative by Dish Network is indicative of how marketers remain enamored of crowdsourcing as a way to generate ideas for advertising campaigns, commercials, logos, packaging and the other trappings of peddling products and services.

The term crowdsourcing refers to open innovation, usually online, that relies on the “wisdom of crowds”— or, at least, their lack of ignorance — to come up with concepts in collaborative fashion. It is an alternative to the traditional model of using an ad agency’s copywriters and art directors.

Dish Network has an agency of record for crowdsourcing, Victors and Spoils, a new shop in Boulder, Colo. Victors and Spoils was asked to manage and curate a crowdsourcing exercise in creating a possible new logo for Dish.

Victors and Spoils is working with a company in Chicago, CrowdSpring, which says it has access to 58,000 designers and writers for its crowdsourcing projects.

The logo competition drew 3,175 entries, says Ross Kimbarovsky, who co-founded of CrowdSpring with Mike Sanson, from 559 participating creative types. There are to be $10,000 in awards in the form of four prizes of $2,500 each.

Ira Bahr, chief marketing officer at Dish in Denver, said he expected to choose the prize winners this week. The winning entries will not necessarily result in a new Dish logo or logos, Mr. Bahr emphasized, adding that to him crowdsourcing projects provide ideas and suggestions rather than mandates.

Crowdsourcing is a valid way to develop marketing concepts, Mr. Bahr said, because “there has to be a massive resource of great creative talent available through the Internet.”

Ad agencies “can get exhausted on particular assignments,” he added, “whereas the crowd doesn’t get exhausted, bored, burned out.”

CrowdSpring also has a competition going to write a script for a 30-second commercial for Dish. Mr. Bahr said it was not something he had commissioned.

To Learn More click Here

Why Entrepreneurs Don't Need VCs

by Saad Khan, 04.14.10, 06:00 AM EDT Forbes.

Technology is changing. Venture capitalists need to do the same
It's the year 2010. I'm an entrepreneur and want to launch my next game-changing, multi-platform, mobile, social, online service. Here's my quick checklist of things to do and some of the costs associated with them:

Incorporate and get my legal house in order: Go to LegalZoom.com. Incorporation packages start at $139.

Recruit rock-star engineering team: Mine my social web for recommendations. Read their reviews. If they're excited, have them start working nights and weekends for equity until version 0.8 of the product. Get a friend's recommendation on an outsourced development team as a plan B (rates starting from $1,500 per developer per month).

Recruit Design Ninjas: Browse design portfolios; find one that seamlessly fits your target market. Repeat above. Try crowdsourcing to leverage the larger community of design talent. 99 designs has Web page designs starting from $314.

Find office space: This morning it's about $2 for my Sencha Green Tea at Peet's (comes with free Wi-Fi). Videoconference my business partner from home this afternoon (free anywhere in the world using Skype). Book meeting rooms for $15 hour from Regus for my client meeting next week, or $99 for a virtual office with a business address and a receptionist. Add a virtual assistant for another $8 an hour.

Build a datacenter: Amazon Web Services provides cloud-based storage and computing power with 99.99% uptime and reliability. Pay as you go, allowing your costs to start small and scale with your revenue.

Acquire customers: Facebook has about 450 million users and access to their API is free. Between my team and I, we already have 20,000 people who will sign up for anything we send out, including our baby pictures.

Tell my mom I'm quitting high school to become an entrepreneur:Priceless.

Science-fiction? Nope, this is today's reality. Consider the following:
To Learn More Click Here

A smart approach to crowdsourcing yields brilliant results

How I executed my first crowdsourcing project in an hour with Smartsheet
I put crowdsourcing to the test to see how quickly and cheaply I could assemble a list of the top 50 US companies' general counsels. This was no academic exercise as my company Black Duck often works with lawyers in large organizations to help them manage open source. I turned toSmartsheet (my now fave crowdsourcing company) and, in really short order for a not a lot of money, learned the product and completed my task with terrific results. Wow!

Here is how it went down:

10:54 Googled "Smartsheet."
11:07 Completed two instructional videos and free live demo.
11:11 Signed up for cheapest plan, $9.95 for one month of access.
11:16 Googled "Fortune 500." Copied the first 50 into Smartsheet.
11:24 Manually identified 4 general counsels to guide writing instructions.
11:32 Composed instructions, launched job, and received email confirmation:

Your Smartsourcing work request has been submitted. You can review an example question below.
Questions submitted: 50
Answers per question: 1 answer
Instructions: General Counsel is the top lawyer in any company. Typically they have a title like VP and General Counsel, EVP and General Counsel, or maybe just General Counsel.
They are usually listed on a company website under Corporate Officers or Leadership or Executive Officers.
Companies typically include that information under About Us, Corporate Information or Investor Relations and then maybe Corporate Governance.
An answer includes: General Counsel
Options: Pay $0.05 per approved answer submitted within the next 12 hours. Limit to workers with a 95% approval rating and allow them to reserve a question for 1 hour. Answers auto-approve after 1 day.
Up to $2.50 (plus $1.00 in commissions) will be charged to your account.

11:59 Ran to class with complete list of the GCs. It was awesome!

OK, it was actually 49 companies. For some reason, #1 Exxon Mobile lagged a bit. And, the data wasn't 100% clean: I had asked for names and 5 of the answers also included titles, which I didn't need. But after a quick chat with Max, the very helpful tech support guy (who answered the phone in seconds) I created and submitted a "cleanup" job to go through the list and expunge the titles from entries that erroneously included them. (Data cleanup is a common application of crowdsourcing.) 8 minutes and two incremental dollars later, I had complete, clean answers!

Now with a vast hour of experience under the belt, I'm guessing I could put together a clean list of, say, all the Fortune 500 CFOs in 45 minutes, for less than $50...and maybe 10 minutes of my time.

Smartsheet's easy-to-adopt spreadsheet paradigm provides a no-brainer front end that makes it a snap to leverage crowdsourcing for many applications. Initially, Dartmouth-dude founders Brent Frei and Eric Browne had project management and collaboration in mind when they conceived of this cloud application. Last year, they added the crowdsourcing feature, so that now with a click, you essentially collaborate with a bunch of anonymous Amazon Mechanical Turk workers who fill out blank columns for you.

Amazon gets credit for the back end, but Smartsheet makes it incredibly easy for users to come up to speed and get useful work done. Crowdsourcing isn't just academic theory: It's here today, it works, and it is (as we say in Boston) wicked smaht!
To Learn More Click Here

Armchair Revolutionary Launches Social Gaming, Activism Site

Non-profit Armchair Revolutionary launched its new site combining social gaming and social activism with the hope of supporting science and technology projects. The site looks to crowd-source social activism by allowing participants to micro-finance social ventures from Play4Change Lab.

Play4Change Lab is billed as a group dedicated to developing commercial-grade video games that promise social change and incorporate new technologies/ideas like location-based software, embedded sensor networks, augmented reality, micro-transactions, virtual goods, and more.

The Hollywood Hill, a "social change organization for film, television, music, and gaming professionals," established the new group with USC's Game institute. Play4Change's advisory board includes notable game industry figures such as Robin Hunicke, Mark Deloura, Doug Church, Adam Sussman, and several others.

Users who've registered on the Armchair Revolutionary site can take quizzes, upload photos, decorate their profile pages, and donate to "world changing" technology research projects. Powered by Live Gamer's virtual economy platform, the site invites players to contribute Kredz, its virtual currency, to those projects (with donation amounts starting at $0.99).

The Armchair Revolutionary site will direct user-funding to Play4Change Lab, as well as post news and progress reports on the group's game development and try to increase public awareness of issues behind targeted social issues. The site will also fund documentary film projects developed by The Hollywood Hill.

The newly-launched site features three games so far including Make Waves, a game that incorporates "sensors, simulation, and augmented reality for a social activism tool that aids ocean sustainability," and Hack Your Body, which "equips users for the fast-approaching Genomics Revolution, supporting the Personal Genome Project, development of software for DNA analysis, and a commercial documentary film."

Armchair Revolutionary's third completed game currently available is End Of Darkness, which seeks to bring users together to "support three of the world's leading energy and micro-financing organizations (E+Co, Grameen Foundation, Selco India) in launching the first publicly financed international clean energy company selling and servicing low-cost solar power kits to the world's poor."
To Learn More Click Here

Will Fashion Stake Make Crowd Sourcing the Next Social Media Phenomenon?

A little known, internet startup called Fashion Stake is hoping to leverage the growing power of the internet and social media to catapult itself into fashion notoriety. Specifically, it will operate on a relatively new premise, known as Crowd Sourcing. The company hopes to attract up and coming designers who have plenty of talent and flair, but simply lack the financial capital to launch their lines. Fashion Stake will provide the virtual venue, through which designers can receive both direct financial support and feedback from potential customers. It’s easy to see how designers can benefit, but what do investors get out of the deal?
Essentially, someone who helps fund the line will maintain a stake in its success and ultimately receive credits to purchase clothes. According to Daniel Gulati, CEO of Fashion Stake, “What we’re basically doing is redirecting the margin to fans and cutting out the retailer altogether.”

In their view, many designers will embrace the idea, since the profit-hungry middleman is being avoided altogether. The concept also has the potential to empower designers to pursue their own individual vision, rather than that of large retail companies. For consumers, the draw is just as attractive. They have the opportunity to influence fashion and, more importantly, be able to buy directly from the designer much more quickly than they would have been able to in the traditional designer/retailer model.

Undoubtedly, Fashion Stake and the designers who sign on to use the service have high hopes that the new venture will succeed. If the concept were to truly catch on, it has the potential to revolutionize the fashion industry. The company and designers aren’t the only ones who have a vested interest in its success or failure. One can also be certain that other startups will be paying close attention, to see if crowd sourcing has the potential to launch them into business orbit, as well.
To Learn More Click Here

What Happens When 25 Unreasonable Fellows Get Together?

The Unreasonable Institute, the social enterprise incubator that I wrote about last month, will find out soon enough. According to Unreasonable co-founder Tyler Hartung, 25 for-profit and not-profit social enterprises from 16 countries have now raised their $6,500 tuition fees via the crowd-funding marketplace on Unreasonable’s website. The average fellow had 98 sponsors with KITO International, which teaches entrepreneurship skills to street youth worldwide landing the most with a whopping 251 sponsors.

There were a few pleasant surprises along the way. “Behind the scenes, the entrepreneurs began an amazing support network where they shared advice, celebrated successes together, and personally sponsored each other,” says Hartung. “The extent to which it happened was beyond our expectations.” Also, says Hartung, an anonymous donor put $25,000 into a “finalist selection fund” with the stipulation that it be equally split up among the candidates, who were then instructed to give it away to three ventures other than their own. Naemeka Ikegwuonu of Smallholders Farmers Rural Radio in Nigeria, was a major beneficiary of that windfall. His company broadcasts agricultural, environmental management and market information for rural poor small farmers, but was severely underfunded. “Three weeks into the marketplace with only 400 USD raised, I lost hope,” he says. His fellow candidates chipped in some of their own money and a good portion of the finalist selection fund to bump Ikegwuonu into the final 25. “Their efforts rekindled my spirit,” he says.

While the folks at Unreasonable are lining up the final group of mentors for the incubator (which includes Neal Baer, executive producer of “Law and Order”), the fellows are busy applying for visas, making reservations for flights, and preparing themselves for ten weeks at the Unreasonable Institute’s program in Boulder, which begins on May 28. “We’re researching the background, expertise and personal interests of all mentors to ensure every second of our interaction is informed and worthwhile,” says Kito founder Maria Springer. “We can’t wait to hear what we are doing wrong and how we can make it right.”
To Learn More Click Here

'Crowdsourcing' gets companies cheap help online

By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — Penny-pinching companies are hiring specialists to plumb the vast resources of the Web in search of cheap expert help.

The concept, called "crowdsourcing," is gaining momentum among businesses, non-profits and individuals who are getting work done at a fraction of the normal cost. And with more people online with ultrafast Internet connections, companies have a vast database of experts to choose from.

Why pay an ad agency or employees millions of dollars, the reasoning goes, if you can offer a prize and tap the talents of experts and amateurs worldwide?

"We're turning idle time into income," says Jordan Ritter, founder of CloudCrowd, one of dozens of crowdsourcing services. "There is no shortage of cheap, quality labor out there," says Kelly Thompson, chief operating officer of crowdsourcing vendor iStockphoto.

Crowdsourcing is being used on everything from a Super Bowl ad for Doritos to improvements in movie recommendations on Netflix. Often the projects, such as logo design and open-source software, are largely created by a few individuals.

For example, XLNTads acts as a middleman between major brands such as Procter & Gamble and Anheuser-Busch and its network of 15,000 videographers. The major brands pay XLNTads a fee to help them find creative types to create online and TV ads.

Since 2007, Frito-Lay has dangled prize money and the promise of Super Bowl airtime to wannabe ad execs to create a TV spot for its Doritos chips. It gets thousands of entries and has chosen spots as good as something a Madison Avenue agency might produce for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Little data exist on the fledgling market, but analysts say it is growing in popularity. "Anecdotally, we're seeing more examples of crowdsourcing — even by the government to make policy (on protecting the environment)," says Joe McKendrick, an independent technology analyst in Philadelphia.

Some companies have gone a step further, with services that target experts in specialized fields. GuruStorms is a Facebook-like service that helps small businesses find and brainstorm with experts in fields such as technology, medicine and business. Experts are paid $500 to $5,000, based on their contributions. Businesses pay GuruStorms a fee.

The cost-cutting approach does not come without risk. Some tasks are performed by underage youth in underdeveloped countries, if the process is not properly managed.

"It is a concern, but the work is typically awarded to the talent that bubbles to the top," says Mark Walsh, co-founder of GeniusRocket, which has worked on 275 crowdsourcing projects. For PepsiCo, it sponsored a contest that resulted in 30 viral videos for Pepsi's Aquafina Splash. Pepsi paid $10,000 for three of the videos, which were viewed more than 400,000 times.
To Learn More Click Here

Crowdfund brings community financing

SA lacks an angel funding network to help online start-ups develop prototypes of their products.

This is the view of Eve Dmochowska, one of the board members of a new initiative, the Crowdfund. “SA cannot compete in the global online sector if it isn't funding start-ups in the beginning stage,” notes Dmochowska, adding that venture capitalist firms are mostly interested in investing large sums of money for proven ideas that generate revenue.

According to Dmochowska, the concept for the Crowdfund started about a month ago, and the initiative has been successful. “I don't know what the benchmarks are, but also I don't have to. A million rand in under a month is very favourable.”

The Crowdfund works by getting masses of people together who invest R1 000 or more, up to a limit of R10 000, she explains. Dmochowska says the investment amount is kept small so should the investment be lost, it becomes immaterial.

When asked about the average amount people were prepared to pledge, Dmochowska said individuals were willing to contribute around R3 000 each.

She says the money is pooled into the Crowdfund, a trust being managed by legal firm Bowman Gilfillan. “Everything is governed by the board and its trustees,” she adds.

“The Crowdfund board approves the use of the fund to finance between 10 and 20 teams that have excellent ideas, with the goal of converting the ideas into workable prototypes in exchange for equity,” she explains. “It also provides valuable mentorship, facilities and services where applicable.”

Dmochowska notes that the economies of scale play a role in the Crowdfunding initiative, which refers to the way pooling a large number of small investments creates a much higher capital.

“Once a workable prototype is developed, a formal venture capitalist network is approached for further funding, at which point the Crowdfund most probably cashes out.”

Dmochowska says there are six criteria that potential entrepreneurs must meet in order to apply for Crowdfunding. “It needs to be an online technology, and must have global applications and aspirations. It must be innovative, appealing, and have a viable and clearly defined business model.”

She adds that the project must be able to complete stage one of the development process within the budget of R50 000 to R100 000.

With the threat of social engineering and scams prevalent as the 2010 Soccer World Cup approaches, ITWeb asked Dmochowska about the potential threat of scams, as the concept could be a mechanism for scamming people out of money.

“Scams from where?” she says. “We don't just hand over money... we work very closely with the start-up all the way.”

According to Dmochowska, the Crowdfund only started officially accepting submissions yesterday, and have already received quite a few submissions.

“We will only start accessing each of the submissions from next week, when we have our first board meeting. But there are definitely some that I think have great potential,” she concludes.
To Learn More Click Here

Root's Crowd Sourcing Launch Deemed A Success

Just about a week after launching its free beta app to help map wireless network performance, Root Wireless reports its crowd sourcing program has generated 1.25 million data points.

The 1.25 million didn't come in just one week; the program started before that, but on March 22, the company opened the beta up to Android and BlackBerry smartphone users. Root is not releasing the number of beta users it has lined up - just that "thousands" of people are involved.

"We're thrilled with the results that we've had so far," says Root Wireless CEO Paul Griff. In the past week, the company has gathered data from every state in the lower 48 and even though it isn't currently targeting areas outside the United States, it has seen download activity from Canada and Mexico.

Root Wireless is using crowd sourcing to collect data because it enables the company to collect far more information in a shorter time than using its own scouts to do mapping in U.S. markets.

The data points, which include everything from signal strength to upload and download speeds and connection failures, are anonymously aggregated into a pool to be used to determine how well a carrier's network performs in a given market. For now, the company is concentrating on the big four U.S. national carriers.

Root's "light" application, which beta users download to their smartphones, runs in the background and was engineered so as not to affect the battery power or performance of the device. Because the app runs in the background, the company is designing a special version for the iPhone.

The Root Mobile application will be released for handsets running Windows Mobile operating systems before the end of the second quarter.

Root Wireless already maps 15 U.S. metropolitan markets where consumers can compare wireless services in their neighborhoods and publishes that through a deal with CNET.

Bellevue, Wash.-based Root estimates that 50,000 crowd sourcers per carrier – well distributed geographically – will be required to map wireless network performance coast-to-coast.
To Learn More Click Here

ConceptFeedback.com Crowdsources Website Reviews from Thousands of Experts

ConceptFeedback.com, a crowdsourcing community for website reviews, is now home to over 5,000 web design and development professionals, marketers and entrepreneurs. Concept Feedback allows businesses and website owners to tap in to a diverse and knowledgeable audience to generate quick, actionable ideas and improve website results.

Conceptfeedback.com, a crowdsourcing community for website reviews, today announced that it now offers businesses access to the expertise of over 5,000 web design and development professionals, marketers and entrepreneurs. Anyone with a website can now solicit the opinion of thousands of web experts to help improve the online experience they provide their customers.

Once a website is posted on Concept Feedback, members are invited to provide reviews. On average, a concept receives 12 or more unique reviews, while some can generate as many as 100. Because of the nature of the community, feedback can cover a variety of topics, including design, usability, content and strategy. "Hosting an expert focus group with such a wide range of disciplines could take weeks and cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars" says Founder and CEO, Andrew Follett, "Concept Feedback provides the service instantly, for a fraction of the cost."

Each review posted is accompanied by a reputation score, which allows the customer to determine which feedback to value most. The reputation score is determined by the quality of advice the member has contributed in the past. Members who provide the most insightful reviews are rewarded with extra points, and in some cases, cash prizes.

According to Noel Tock, a web designer at noeltock.com, Concept Feedback is "an awesome tool, and it's helped a non-designer such as myself...it is a great way to receive constructive criticism and pre-check designs." Daniel Pataki of Webtastique had a similar experience, "On my first concept I received plenty of reviews, all of them helpful and honest, helping me make a better design." Concept Feedback has been named a "Top 10" website by HOW magazine and one of 10 "excellent feedback sources you should be using right now" by Inspired Mag.

In addition to receiving website feedback, contributing feedback can help improve technical and communication skills, as well as produce new contacts and clients. Timothy Ramler, a freelance designer and member of Concept Feedback said "I have received more immediate input from others during my short period of time with Concept Feedback than I have collectively as a freelance graphic designer. This has really pushed me to a new level."

Over the next several months, Concept Feedback is planning on releasing a number of new features and tools to help businesses create even better websites. "Gathering website feedback is essential to the development of highly performing websites" says Andrew Follett, "and we hope to make that process as fun and efficient as possible!"

For more information on the news that is the subject of this release, please contact Andrew Follett or visit http://www.conceptfeedback.com to register for a free account.

About Concept Feedback:

Concept Feedback, LLC was founded by online marketing consultant Andrew Follett in partnership with Chicago-based web development company DevBridge, Inc.

Contact:

Andrew Follett, President and CEO
Concept Feedback, LLC
651-245-7178
http://www.conceptfeedback.com
To Learn More Click Here

Amateur hour: Crowdsourcing the campaign

Rory Cellan-Jones | 12:25 UK time, Monday, 29 March 2010

Are the political parties now too impoverished - or just too bone idle - to do the basic work of research and campaigning by themselves? Or do they really believe in the wisdom of crowds? 
I ask because both Labour and the Conservatives appear to have caught the crowdsourcing bug.

Last week the Tories appealed to the internet for help in framing their response to the Budget, and now Labour wants web users to design its campaign posters. So how is that going?

Screengrab of Your Budget Response website"Going well", was the verdict of Conservative Party chairman Eric Pickles on its crowdsourcing effort - or at least that's what he was saying on Twitter just an hour or so after the Budget response site 
went live. I asked him how many responses had been received - and he replied:

"Hi Rory, I'm not in the office at the moment but the team tell me they're coming in thick and fast."

Now the Conservatives were always clear that this was not about creating yet another forum for debate about the Budget, but a way of unleashing a citizens' army of researchers who might spot the "devil in the detail" and hand over the ammunition to the hard-pressed Tory Treasury team.
 So, on Friday afternoon I inquired again of the Conservatives - what exactly had been delivered to George Osborne and his team that they had not spotted themselves?


A spokeswoman came back with a rather vague reply. Yes there
 had been "hundreds of really good comments", though they appeared to fall more into the category of opinion rather than fresh analysis. She could not give me any example of a detail spotted by the web crowd that had eluded the party's Treasury team, but promised that some of the comments would be published this week.

So it looks as though the "crowdsourcing" of online economic expertise has morphed into just another web forum.

And what of Labour's plan to save on its advertising budget by getting its supporters to design some posters? It's promising that next weekend digital poster boards in London and Manchester will carry a poster designed by one of its online supporters - "the first time a political party, certainly in the UK has done this."

Well I think the Liberal Democrats might contest that - they've had a campaign running for a while on their ACT social networking site, inviting activists to "design a poster promoting the core Lib Dem value of 'Fairness'". They already have a number of entries up on the site, and appear to be making their "crowdsourcing" more of a public affair than either the Conservatives or Labour.

Labour's press release about its poster competition quotes Robert Senior, the head of the party's own advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, as saying,"The world of one-way communications is a bygone era. We prefer to invite our audiences to participate in the ideas and play an active part in this election."

And by the way is it just a coincidence that this initiative was unveiled on the day that the Conservatives' ad agency, M&C Saatchi, launched their latest poster? Perhaps the advertising war between Labour and the Conservatives is also turning into a continuation of an ancient advertising industry feud.

But I wonder if Mr Senior is really convinced that online amateurs can do as good a job as his highly professional - and highly-paid - copywriters and artists?

Examples such as "mydavidcameron" have shown that the online community can be pretty inventive when it comes to disrupting the traditional campaign poster.

But we've yet to see the evidence that the amateurs can do as good a job as either professional political researchers or advertising executives. So expect plenty more "crowdsourcing" initiatives, but I think the parties will still be spending as much as they can afford on professional campaigning.
To Learn More Click Here

The Guardian asks what role crowdsourcing will play in the future of journalism

Mercedes Bunz of The Guardian's Digital Media Blog recently asked whether it was time for journalists to fully embrace crowd-sourced journalism with an award. This hypothetical question was in fact just recently made a reality, when an anonymous group of Iranians received a George Polk Award in Journalism for their footage of a female protesters violent death. Despite the difficulties of determining who in the crowd should get the award, should it actually become its own award category, the blog post sheds light upon the important role the crowd now plays in journalism.
Social networking services consistently put average day citizens on the front lines of news as it is unfolding. Reporting on events like the plane that safely crash-landed on the Hudson River or the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake can only accurately be told with the help of crowd sourcing technology. Crowd sourcing websites like Ushahidi actually worked to save lives in the Haitian earthquake, pooling user contributions to create a crisis map of the most devastated areas.

The crowds ability to capture and publish what they see, hear, and feel as it happens ultimately creates a more accurate mosaic of an event felt from a variety of different perspectives.

Although crowd sourcing depends upon users essentially being in the wrong place at the right time, they ultimately contribute material that The Digital Media Blog described as "faster, more detailed and richer than the material provided by news agencies."

Crowd sourcing, in a less obvious application, can also be used for investigative reporting. One reporter followed the tip-offs posted by citizens only to uncover a sensational story regarding the police's involvement in a death.

Respected news outlets such as The Guardian and CNN have gone so far as to reach out to the crowd. The Guardian has an entire page devoted to uncovering MP's expenses, which employs the help of average reader in sifting through nearly 240,000 pages of expense documents. So far 26, 155 users have participated in the effort. Employing crowd sourcing in a similar fashion, The Huffington Post called upon readers to scourge the 1,400 page US Senate Stimulus Bill. The call was meet by 367 participants who willingly trudged through the bill in a search of any abnormalities that might exist.

For news agencies to monitor all of the incoming information from the masses would be an impossible task. News outlets and reports might be willing to devote their time to finding coverage of a specific event, but looking for story leads is impossible.

In order to save time while also capitalizing on the crowds desire to participate in the news, some outlets have created digital versions to accompany and perhaps replace the more traditional "tip" hotlines. Sites like the CNN iReport are notable for taking such an approach and receive nearly 10,000 monthly iReports. Although this represents a hefty amount of data to sift through, news outlets can use statistics to tag reoccurring leads that might result in a bigger story.

For reporters to benefit from crowd sourcing, The Digital Media Blog recommends that journalists cultivate a crowd following, stating "...in order to be able to ask for information using a blog or Twitter account, it is required that the journalist has built up a relationship within a community." In the competitive world of journalism, crowd sourcing can be used as a huge asset to reporters in gathering information. While issues of accuracy are ever present, Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media, believes the combined "mosaic [of images or information] will be true, even if a few pixels aren't."
To Learn More Click Here