Crowdsourcing: Turning customers into creative directors

by Fiona Graham - Technology of business - reporter, BBC News

"The office building doesn't look so good from the outside, we don't need it to, so the rent is lower, but inside it's really nice." Ning Li is Made.com's 28-year-old CEO, and we are at the company's London office, on the 11th floor of an unremarkable Notting Hill office block. Made.com is an online-only furniture retailer, so there's no danger that customers will drop by. The company is six months old and already approaching profitability, with revenue doubling month on month, despite relying on word of mouth rather than marketing. The Union Jack Piggy Bag from Made.com. The company imports 80% of stock from China, and sources 20% in the UK.
But this is a furniture business with no warehouse - and no inventory. Instead, products are "crowdsourced". This is how it works. Visitors to the website are encouraged to submit their designs. The best of these are worked up into prototypes, and posted on the website. Registered members of the Made.com community vote. The most popular pieces are then available for pre-order - made in China, shipped by container and delivered directly to buyers from the port.
The designers are paid nothing upfront - but receive 5% royalties on successful designs, which Li maintains is above the industry average. Ning Li: "What we think is good for the consumer doesn't matter - it's what the consumer thinks is good that matters."
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New Concept in Crowdsourcing: IdeaOffer.com Introduces Incentivized Innovation and Feedback Platform Fit for Any Budget

Huntington Beach, CA (PRWEB) September 27, 2010

IdeaOffer (http://www.IdeaOffer.com) emerges from limited testing stages with a brand new set of features and big plans for late 2010 - early 2011. IdeaOffer has added to the original concept of crowdsource with rewards-for-ideas and now with new "Create a Survey" functionality. IdeaOffer has recently introduced team building (http://blog.ideaoffer.com/about-idea-offer-teams/) and is set to begin team and individual competitions, along with a new referral bonus (http://blog.ideaoffer.com/referral-bonus-is-live/), free creation of projects via sponsorship (http://blog.ideaoffer.com/offer-contest-entry/), a new option for creators to make idea submissions into a public discussion, and a multi-stage contest series (http://blog.ideaoffer.com/about-this-contest-series/) all aimed at taking IdeaOffer to the next level and building a very active user base in preparation for the next stages in development set for late 2010 - early 2011.
IdeaOffer is a platform for businesses and individuals seeking fresh ideas and perspectives or feedback and other data from survey responses to obtain them from one web resource by allowing them to create projects on IdeaOffer and to offer a cash prize which the crowdsource community then responds to with the prospect of winning the prize for contributing the best idea or most useful response. In describing IdeaOffer, Dan Cummins, CEO of IdeaOffer, said, "IdeaOffer.com is the platform for crowdsourcing innovation and feedback. Any individual or any size business can use IdeaOffer to entice creative ideas and fresh perspectives by funding a prize they can afford."
IdeaOffer has begun aggressively pursuing growth by adding the ability to create teams, to compete in frequent team and individual competitions, to receive referral bonuses for helping to build the community, and with a new multi-stage contest culminating with a grand prize drawing for two iPads (64 GB, WiFi) upon reaching 20,000 users.

Producer Ken Davenport to "Crowd-fund" Broadway Revival of Godspell

Like the high-school drama teacher asking parents to chip in for costumes and lights, producer Ken Davenport is hitting up the masses for his new show—only instead of playing in the gymnasium, this one will try for Broadway. And if the show is a hit, those masses will turn a profit.

On Wednesday, Mr. Davenport announced a plan to bring "Godspell" to Broadway by raising small payments from hundreds of investors—what he calls the first-ever "crowd-funded show."

Davenport Theatrical Enterprises Producer Ken Davenport is attempting to bring 'Godspell' to Broadway.

The $5 million production would require a minimum contribution of $1,000—a fraction of the $10,000 investment it usually takes to break into the typical Broadway production, he said.

"I've always felt that there are people all over the country and all over the world who want to invest in Broadway shows but they don't know who to talk to and they don't want to risk a high amount in the beginning," Mr. Davenport said. "This experience allows me to go out into the world and say, 'Hey, if you're interested, you can talk to me, I'm here. It's not a private club.'"

Mr. Davenport said he launched the idea with "Godspell" because of the musical's message about the value of community. He said he also wants to convince investors that Broadway can be used in the same way as the stock market.

The project is partly an appeal to investor egos: Mr. Davenport noted that backers will be called producers and see their names on a poster "prominently placed" outside the theater. A website, PeopleOfGodspell.com, will invite investors to post their photos with their hometown and a quote. (The site currently features an image of a brick wall with the promise, "YOUR NAME HERE.") Everyone gets a button that says: "I'm a Broadway producer!"

"It's lunatic, but it's not dumb," said longtime producer Manny Azenberg, adding that small investments mean lower expectations. "It's like going to the track—you know you're going to lose, and if you win, it's thrilling."

Mr. Davenport, a 38-year-old New York producer with a well-read theater blog, plans to find his backers through an online campaign. Once onboard, investors can offer opinions, but Mr. Davenport said they will not have the power to make creative or business decisions.

No theater has been secured for "Godspell," which played on and off Broadway in the 1970s. The current production, which Mr. Davenport wants to stage next spring or summer, will be directed by Daniel Goldstein and choreographed by Tony Award nominee Christopher Gattelli. Auditions are set to begin this week.

Mr. Davenport, whose credits include Off Broadway's "Altar Boyz" and Broadway's "13" and "Oleanna," said he has gotten documentation from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission permitting the venture.

Bob Boyett, a veteran producer who worked with Mr. Davenport on "13," called him "brilliant" for attempting to build a new generation of theater investors while establishing an early network of support for his show. But he added that having so many investors could engender administrative challenges, such as having to update hundreds of people on the show's finances.

"There's definitely going to be some producers…who say, 'Oh my, that's an awful idea to have all those people around," Mr. Boyett said. "But I think Ken is capable of managing that."
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Two’s company, three’s a crowd conference: CrowdConf 2010

By Ville Miettinen, September 1st, 2010

It has never been easier to keep in touch and informed with the world around us. With email, newsfeeds and Twitter, the problem today is too much information, rather than too little.

Even so, I’m a firm believer that there is no substitute for good, old-fashioned face time. Actually meeting people in your field, having a chat and swapping contact details is still the best way to develop your ideas and grow your business. The problem is, of course, no one has the time to constantly travel around the place meeting people. Everyone is far too busy reading their news feeds.

Mingling with the crowd
This is why all of us at Microtask are so excited about the first annual crowdsourcing conference, CrowdConf, which is being held in San Francisco on 4 October.

In attendance will be researchers, technologists, outsourcing experts, legal scholars, and artists from all over the crowdsourcing world. Along with the all-important mingling, attendees will hear from a list of guest speakers that reads like a who’s who of the crowdsourcing and human computation industry. This list includes Jeff Howe (who first coined crowdsourcing in 2006), the bestselling authors Tim Ferriss, Jonathan Zittrain and David Alan Grier, and the CEOs of some of the most exciting new crowdsourcing businesses such as Crowdflower, Samasource, Keniks, uTest, Odesk, LiveOps and Victors and Spoils.

In addition to the guest speakers there will be a series of peer-reviewed presentation tracks and technology demonstrations. Topics for discussion include the past, present and future of crowdsourcing, quality assurance and metrics, social and economic implications of crowdsourcing, task design and worker incentives, as well as innovative projects, experiments, and applications. Basically, everything we talk about on this blog.

If the future of the working world sounds like something you might be interested in, don’t miss out (tickets are still available). Exactly what we end up talking about is of course anyone’s guess, but what is clear is that the ideas and relationships that this inaugural conference fosters will play an important role in shaping the world in years to come.

Microtask is a proud sponsor of the event, and both our CTO Otto Chrons as well as yours truly will be attending in person. If you’re visiting CrowdConf, please come and swing by our booth. And if you really don’t have time to make it, don’t worry too much – at least there’ll be plenty of blogging, vlogging, texting and tweeting to fill you in on what you missed.

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Why slaying dragons guarantees you win big in business

by Peter Shallard

This post connects the dots between fire-breathing lizards and a psychological issue that holds entrepreneurs back from their biggest goals.

I’ve wanted to write a post about dragons for a long time. Weird as it sound, dragon’s fascinate me. Not in the lame dungeons and dragons way either. By the time you’re done reading this post, dragons will fascinate you too. I guarantee it.

The dragon is a universal legend. Almost every human culture’s mythology makes a mention of dragons. It’s astounding that, while our cultures are so vastly different, this one myth is so consistent across the globe.

The dragon myth exists in Chinese, Indian and every European culture. The scaly beasts are also known for the same infamous characteristics, no matter where you find them.

Beyond the wings, fire breathing and general serpent-like appearance, dragons have a reputation for:

• Guarding vast treasures
• Being violent and vile tempered
• Being wickedly persuasive (yes, they speak!)
• Instilling fear in puny humans
• Being ancient

Tolkien’s dragon Smaug, from The Hobbit, is probably the ultimate representation of the dragon in modern literature. Ancient Smaug guards a fantastic treasure, insidiously erodes Bilbo’s confidence and violently terrorizes a town of innocent people. As dragons go, Smaug checks all the boxes.

I’m an entrepreneur. Why do I care?!

Good question. Unless you’ve been living under a cave for the last year, you’ve probably heard about Seth Godin’s book Linchpin. I’m a huge fan of the book because it introduces the concept of the “Lizard Brain” – the part of our brain that unconsciously creates fear.

Working with the Lizard Brain is a big part of what I do. If you hang around this blog enough, you’ll figure out that I talk about overcoming fear quite a bit.

Here’s the thing about the Lizard Brain:

• It comes between you and the vast treasures your entrepreneurial career could bring you
• It can be violently abusive and self critical, torching your confidence
• It is the most persuasive part of your inner consciousness. It pulls emotional strings and blackmails with psychology.
• Creating crippling fear is it’s favourite extra-curricular activity
• The Lizard Brain literally is ancient, it’s the oldest part of our brain we’ve inherited from our reptilian ancestors.

If you’ve ever wondered why dragons are such a widespread myth then wonder no more.

Dragons are the ultimate antagonist of the oldest stories, serving as the final obstacle between the brave hero and his ultimate prize.

The dragon metaphor is present everywhere. Our ultimate succumbing to the lizard, driven by serpentine persuasiveness, begets original sin in the world’s most famous creation myth. In fact, the King James bible uses the words “serpent”, “dragon” and “devil” interchangeably.

Dragons are the story of our Lizard Brain. They’re a cultural metaphor for the darkest, most destructive part of ourselves. They are a representation of fear itself.

Entrepreneurs are the dragon-slayers of the 21st century

Crowd Sourcing Disaster Relief

This article was written by Lukas Biewald, CEO of CrowdFlower and Leila Janah, CEO of Samasource.

On Thursday July 8, 2010, residents of Oakland took to the streets after a jury convicted police officer Johannes Mehserle of involuntary manslaughter of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed black youth. Race-related riots are not new to California. But this time, the first people to learn about violent incidents tied to the protests weren’t riot cops — they were the Oakland residents behindOscarGrantProtests.com, a website that allowed people near the action to map incidents of violence and view reports from others. Established in a few days, OscarGrantProtests employs crisis mapping technology from a group of open-source developers called Ushahidi, who built the software to report violence in the aftermath of the 2008 disputed Kenyan presidential election.

Ushahidi has radically altered the way we respond to disasters by placing reporting power in the hands of people who might otherwise be victims. Virtually every disaster affecting large groups of people presents the same problem: in the absence of real-time data, emergency responders don’t know where to go and when. Technology can solve this problem quickly and cheaply, but governments and relief agencies don’t often use it.

Telecommunications infrastructure is now ubiquitous — even in sub-Saharan Africa, eight out of 10 adults have access to a mobile phone. The four billion cell phones in use around the world create massive amounts of data and demand for crowdsourcing technology to aggregate, categorize, and otherwise make sense of it.

Mission 4636 provides a good example of how we can use data from mobile phones to make relief efforts more effective. In the aftermath of the January earthquake that shook the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, millions of Haitians lacked food, water and shelter. Aid workers flooded the capital, but lacked information about who needed help, and where. Voila and Digicel, Haiti’s two major telecommunications carriers, had their cell towers up and running immediately following the quake, but huge call volumes exceeded their capacity and resulted in service outages. Text messages offered a solution — texts take up less bandwidth than calls, and are much less affected by network delays.

A group of companies, including Ushahidi, FrontlineSMS, CrowdFlower and Samasource, collaborated to set up a text message hotline – “Mission 4636” – supported by the U.S. Department of State. The Haitian government collaborated with radio stations to advertise the hotline, and a few days after the disaster, anyone in Port-au-Prince could send an SMS to a toll-free number, 4636, to request help. The messages were routed to relief crews at the U.S. Coast Guard and the International Red Cross on the ground.

In the first month, Haitians sent more than 40,000 texts to 4636. But Mission 4636 ran into a problem: the messages were in Haitian Creole, but the aid workers designated to respond spoke English. Worse still, many of the texts contained location information that only Haitians familiar with the geography of Port-au-Prince could comprehend, such as references to neighborhoods or popular landmarks. Without a translation service that could operate in real-time, Mission 4636 provided little value to victims of the earthquake.

Traditionally, governments solve problems like these by hiring contractors — after major disasters, it’s not uncommon for relief agencies to spend millions of dollars building temporary call centers to handle the flood of new calls. Outsourced translation firms abound, but charge large premiums to deliver translation on a 24/7 basis. In Haiti, crowdsourcing provided an answer: we customized Ushahidi and CrowdFlower’s technology to allow hundreds of thousands of Haitians living outside the country to translate texts from Port-au-Prince in real time, and for free, via a public website. News of the site spread quickly through the Haitian Diaspora living abroad, who heard of our efforts through a grassroots media campaign The results were immediate. In the first day, Mission 4636 got a message from an overcrowded hospital that was running out of fuel. Within minutes the message was translated and desperately needed fuel was deployed.

Mass collaboration accomplished more than Creole-English translations — armchair disaster relief agents around the world also collaboratively edited maps and information about Haiti to assist aid workers. A few days after the disaster, Openstreetmap.com, a Wikipedia-like site for amateur map makers, had more accurate maps of Haiti than the U.S. Department of Defense.

Perhaps most critically, crowdsourcing provided hundreds of thousands of data points on what Haitians most needed after the earthquake. Surprisingly, after immediate needs were met, text messages sent to 4636expressed unprompted demand for something other food, water or shelter — people started asking for travay, or work. It became clear that short-form translation could create needed jobs in parts of Haiti flooded with refugees from the disaster. Samasource trained 50 people in Mirebalais, a small rural community in Haiti’s Central Plateau, to translate the 4636 messages on the web after Ushahidi volunteers categorized them by priority level. Using netbooks (small, cheap laptops) powered by a generator and a satellite Internet connection, these workers translated tens of thousands of messages, forming a kind of “virtual assembly line” with the Ushahidi volunteers.

The rapid proliferation of broadband, wireless and cell phones, coupled with new crowdsourcing technology, is completely changing the face of disaster relief. Everyone with a computer can provide crucial assistance, sifting through satellite photos, translating messages or updating maps, and most people are happy to do this free of charge — contributing to life-saving relief efforts is a powerful motivator. Mission 4636 cost less than $500,000 to design, build and deploy. At a fraction of the cost of most relief budgets, crowdsourcing can solve coordination problems on the ground. Governments and aid agencies should make it a central part of future disaster response efforts.

Hipster Fashion Line Rides Crowd Sourcing To Business Success

Jake Nickell, founder of Chicago-based Threadless.com t-shirts, had no intention of turning his hobby into a career. But after three years of running an Internet-based clothing company, Nickell soon realized that he had the chance to transform something he loved doing into his job, He hasn’t looked back since.

Over the last decade, Threadless has grown from an art school project run out of Nickell’s home in Chicago into a crowd sourcing pioneer, with 75 employees and a brand that has become an iconic name in casual fashion.

“It was initially a hobby. It was never intended to be a business,” Nickell said. “We just want to be the awesomest [sic] place for people to hang out. We don’t think of it so much as selling t-shirts, but as a place to hang out and make art.”

Unlike old-school art “happenings” that took places in artists’ studios, warehouse space or industrial districts, this one, until recently, resided exclusively on the Internet.

Art and commerce

From day one, Nickell established a business model that encouraged artistic expression. Designers post their t-shirt concepts to the Threadless website, where an active and critical community rates the picture. Threadless then prints the highest rated designs onto t-shirts available for purchase on the website.

Despite the system leading to millions of shirts sold every year, Nickell didn’t initially intend to make money from his project. Since it’s inception, Nickell has had only two goals for the business: Provide artists with an outlet where they can simultaneously distribute their work and make money, and give wearers a voice in which designs get produced..

“I think my lack of understanding of traditional business stuff has actually helped us. It has been really helpful for our corporate culture,” Nickell said. “Even today, a lot of our decisions about doing stuff are based on how cool it would be.”

The artists receive $2,500 if their design makes it onto a shirt and another $500 if popular demand leads to a reprint of the shirt after the initial run. In recent years, Threadless has moved beyond t-shirts, printing the designs on everything from water bottles to iPod cases. If an artist makes it onto one of those other items, they also receive $500.

That high fee comes from Nickell’s respect for the artists, and many designs never make the company any profit at all.

“Because our award is so generous, many designs never recoup their costs,” Nickell said. “However, we strongly believe in a model that equally rewards all printed artists for the first printing of a tee. This contributes strongly to the ‘all for one and one for all’ spirit of our community.”

Crowd sourced success

By tapping into a community of artists to design the products, and a community of fans to vet them, Threadless became one of the first companies to take advantage of an Internet business model now called crowd sourcing. However, Threadless’ model predates the coining of that phrase by four years, and Nickell hates the term.

“I don’t like [the term] crowd sourcing. It seems sterile and one sided, like a company needs something and goes to the crowd to do it for them,” Nickell said. “We’re more passion-based. We see people doing these awesome things, and we want to help them with it.”

To emphasize that connection with its artists and its customers, Threadless is going on tour this summer. Nickell has transformed a camper trailer into a mobile store that will drive across the U.S., giving customers and artists a chance to meet each other and the company’s employees.

Similarly, in 2007, Threadless opened a brick-and-mortar store in Chicago. Even though the store is far less profitable than the website, it grows the brand as a community center and venue for t-shirt and art classes, Nickell said.

Deliberately opening a store destined to be less successful than a profitable website might seem like a step backward to most business owners, but that move is yet another example of how Threadless has succeeded by putting art first and money second.

“If I had to give up one thing, it would be the money I made from this, because the relationships I’ve made with artists is so valuable,” Nickell said.
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Microfinancing to solve academic poverty?

By Leila Sattary

With budget cuts starting to bite and a fresh wave of bad news expected in the Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2010, UK scientists are looking for new ways to finance their research. One funding method gaining momentum in the US is 'microfinancing', where many members of the public donate small sums of money, usually online, to research projects they feel are worthwhile.

Microfinancing is a term most commonly used to describe the financial services provided to help people out of poverty. Now the term is being applied to research projects funded by numerous small contributions of money. Over the last 3 years, a number of microfinancing initiatives for science research have emerged in the US.

The Open Source Science Project allows researchers to propose projects and pitch for funding from the broader online community. Priyan Weerappuli, the project's executive director, believes it is successful in helping researchers find alternative funding sources.

Could lots of small donations be the future of research funding?
'The project started in a time of funding cuts in the US and intended to give researchers a different funding model and also increase scientific literacy in the public,' he says.

'Initially most projects were "pop-science" - subjects that were already in the public eye - but now many projects that are funded are in niche disciplines.'

Although the way projects are financed differs greatly from the traditional funding routes through government, charity or industry, there are many familiar features.


The public can choose to fund individual projects and work by indivual researchers
Projects are peer reviewed by experts in their field before they are placed online for funding, a research log must be kept to update the donors on progress and researchers are expected to publish an informal paper on completion. There are also some unique positive aspects to the scheme - researchers retain complete ownership and intellectual property rights and are free to publish as they wish. Although anyone can apply, about 70 per cent of projects on the Open Source Science Project were proposed by university academics.

Fund Science, SciFiles and EurekaFund are all similar US initiatives where donors can choose from a list of public abstracts. If this trend for 'crowd-funding' science continues to grow, it could be one means to alleviate the low application success rates at federal funding agencies.

The closest example of microfinancing for science on this side of the Atlantic is Cancer Research UK's MyProjects scheme. Launched in October 2008, MyProjects allows Cancer Research UK donors to search projects by type of cancer and location to find a specific research project to donate money. Samantha Collen, senior project leader at Cancer Research UK, believes that giving supporters greater choice in how they give money makes the process more valuable and allows people to see the impact of their donation.

'We also wanted to take advantage of the viral potential of the web. MyProjects has broadened the reach of Cancer Research UK and targeted a younger audience, a higher proportion of men and more people who have not supported the charity previously.'

While microfinanced projects are usually peer reviewed, ultimately the public decide on whether a project is convincing enough for them to part with their money. Letting the public choose does reduce bureaucracy but risks concentrating funding in areas that are more publicly understandable. The serendipitous nature of research makes it difficult to solve specific societal problems, like climate change or cancer, by simply concentrating effort in those areas.

Microfinancing for science remains a very small fraction of the funding portfolio in the US, and it is yet to take off in the UK. However, as more researchers slip into academic poverty in these times of severe budget cuts, microfinancing could be a potential way of sustaining scientific research in the UK. Interesting? Spread the word using the 'tools' menu on the left.
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Cloud Funding Offers More than Pennies from Heaven

by Tom Harnish

In the age of social networking, if you need money for an art project or for a new business, friending could also mean funding.

Chris Young wanted to shoot a feature film presentation. The plot: dude's car breaks down in the desert, no mobile signal, not a soul in sight. Parched, our hero stumbles into a lonely gas station where he makes a disturbing discovery. Someone, or something, is chained to a backroom wall.

Bankers didn't get it, but people on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn did. Within eight weeks people donated $11,350 (more than his goal) so Young could shoot the 3D live-action short. What did those 92 people receive in return? Depending on how much they contributed, Young's collaborators were given special mention in the credits, invited to the first screening and party, or announced in the main titles as Executive Producer.

Welcome to the world of cloud funding, also known as crowd source capital or social funding, where entrepreneurs combine social networking with project fundraising.

How it Works

Unlike peer-to-peer microlending, which was introduced to the U.S. in 2005 by Kiva, social funds aren't paid back. Unlike debt funding from banks, social funding doesn't require you to pledge collateral or offer personal guarantees. Unlike equity funding from venture investors, you don't have to give up equity or control.

Young used IndieGoGo to raise the money for his project, but other cloud funding websites exist. Kickstarter, Pledge Music and SellaBand focus on the arts, and Spot.Us helps support investigative journalists. IndieGoGo and Invested.in help a wide range of entrepreneurial effort from musicians, to writers, filmmakers, game or application developers, designers, inventors, non-profits and charities.

IndiGoGo was launched in 2008 to leverage social marketing with view that it would democratize lending. And it has. Contributors from 120 countries have participated in more than 5,000 projects on IndieGoGo. The average fund raising goal is about $5,000, but projects range from $500 to $25,000.

The process is straightforward. You create an account, and website forms help you build a project description, establish fund-raising goals, and explain "perks" designed to entice people to contribute at various levels.

Some people will contribute simply because they like what you're doing, and projects with a video description raise 122 percent more, according to IndieGoGo. Other people will be attracted if you offer desirable perks. Contributions tend to be in the $50-$75 and $300-$400 range.

IndieGoGo makes money the old fashioned way; they get 9 percent of whatever you raise. But they add an innovative twist: If you meet your fundraising goal in the time you've set, they pay you back 5 percent. This offers you an incentive to market your project aggressively so the site has a better chance of making money. 4 percent of something is better than 9 percent of nothing, after all.

What if You Don't Make Your Goal?

Nevertheless, not all projects meet their fundraising goals. In any event, if your project is underfunded, you've still learned a valuable lesson. If you can't attract people to your project you know that either your project isn't attractive or your marketing isn't working. Good ideas are a dime a dozen, and most people will politely give you their two cents worth when asked for an opinion. But when it comes to dollars for dancers, say, they may not be as enthusiastic.

Surprisingly, if you don't reach your goal, you still keep the money you raise, less the websites' take. Even more surprisingly, according to Danae Ringelmann, President and co-founder of IndieGoGo, contributors understand they won't get their money back if the project isn't fully funded.

But if you get to keep the money, even if your project isn't fully funded, doesn't that attract people who dishonestly claim they have a project so they can to run off with the money? No, says Ringelmann, "People inherently don't have an itch to fund the unknown. (But) if a friend, blogger you like, or organization you're a part of funds a project and tells you about it, you're much more likely to fund it than if you stumbled upon it on your own."

According to Ringelmann, "The transparent and open nature of cloud funding gives project champions the opportunity to showcase their growing community and the traction on their project — two key elements that not only build trust and spark a movement, but also provide validation that the project is legit. So projects that don't reveal who's behind them, don't have a core community, and don't do outreach to showcase the community building around it are very poor candidates for success. A person who wanted to commit fraud by raising money and running would have to be willing to destroy their reputation and social graph connections across the web to succeed."

Regulatory Issues

Federal and state laws govern debt and equity funding. Any investment opportunity that's offered to the general public, no matter how small, has to be registered at substantial expense with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for example. Technically, you can't even invest $10 in a project led by someone you know personally if they offer you a share of the profits from their venture.

But that may change thanks to social financing. A successful crowdfunding campaign raised $1,300 to cover the cost of preparing a petition to convince the SEC to exempt projects of $20,000 or less, and for contributions of $100 or less. If public response is strong enough, the SEC might just make the change — all thanks to the power of a crowd.

It's Not Just About the Money

Over a two-month period, 97 people contributed a total of $2,700 to help Elaine Zelker, a hospice nurse, produce a photography exhibit of her patient's hands for display in a local gallery. In return, her contributors received a big thank you, or — if they really dug deep — a coffee table book of the collection. That's all.

Zelker say, "I'd love to book more 'hand participants' and capture their last photo. Everyone has a unique story to tell. I am not able to leave my day job yet, and do photography full time. I am waiting for that moment."

That may happen. She's booked a half dozen photography jobs over the past three months. They may not have been a direct result of the exhibit project, she says, but now she knows people love her work. Social funding may have helped her take her photography to a new level.

Who needs pennies from heaven when you can find dollars in the cloud?

Tom Harnish is a serial entrepreneur. Always on the bleeding edge of technology, he learned what works (and what doesn't) when raising money by spending countless (and often fruitless) hours in front of lenders and investors.
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Crowdsourcing 101 for Emerging Brands

Posted by Sheila Shayon on August 5, 2010 02:00 PM

Crowdsourcing, a term coined by Wired writer Jeff Howe and explained in the video above, is without a doubt a key digital marketing trend for 2010. The New York Times suggests that small brands shouldn't shy away from tapping into the public's willingness to share ideas to help spur innovation and feedback, and cites the example of a particularly savvy (and successful) tiny brand as a case study.
Trek Light Gear is an online retailer that turned to the wisdom of the crowd out of necessity. Based in Boulder, Colorado, the site sells backpacks, tarps, and its iconic lightweight parachute nylon double hammock. Amazingly, it has a full-time staff of .... one: its founder, Seth Haber, who tells the Times, “I’m always trying to seem bigger.”

Haber turned to the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ for inspiration on growing his business. Working with local market researcher Napkin Labs, Haber engaged with consumers on the key branding question: ‘Should he focus his efforts on the company’s hammock or expand into related areas, like products for campers?’

Napkin Labs tapped into its network to provide feedback, and the crowdsourced answer was loud and clear: grow the business! “It really confirmed my decision not to pigeonhole the business around the lightweight hammock,” said Haber. (Napkin Labs, on average, charges about $10,000 and up for its crowdsourcing and consulting services.)

In his landmark book Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business (condensed here), Howe articulates four basic approaches:
• Collective intelligence: Firms like InnoCentive use the crowd to solve complex problems.
• Creation: Agencies like Ad Hack connect companies with creative talent.
• Voting: Brands like Mountain Dew let users vote on the look of new brands.
• Funding: Sites like Kickstarter raise money through the crowd.
A few additional basics on successful crowdsourcing:

Define the job clearly and then find the right partner through the web – and then turn to Twitter. “This is a place where social media can be superhelpful,” says Niel Robertson, chief executive of Trada, a crowdsourcing firm focused on pay-per-click advertising, who advises always including the tag #crowdsourcing.

Distill your goal. According to Napkin Labs’ CEO Riley Gibson, exploratory queries work best. “What are people’s thoughts on product A? How can we make it better? And what will it look like in five years? It’s not always easy from looking at a site to discern these subtleties. It really helps someone who’s browsing a marketplace to understand who the customers are.”

Ongoing engagement is crucial. Respect the process once it’s begun – stay in the dialogue with respondents to your query and once chosen, work with prospective designers and developers through feedback and review. “Don’t look at crowdsourcing as set and forget," adds Robertson.

Scale and pay as you go. The crowd is the cloud – and can be scaled and remunerated step-by-step.

And now to that Trek Light Gear double hammock…
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EditLift Founder Matt Wise: ‘Cosembling’ a Business Model that Serves

Matt Wise, founder of EditLift, can explain the up side of ADHD like no other. He uses an analogy that involves a lion sleeping uder a tree during daylight hours, and then leaps up to hunt its prey in the darkness. It will only return to the tree when its hunger is satiated. In other words, the lion reserves its strength and energy for only what matters. The lion’s focus is heightened when it is necessary.

Sounds an awful lot like a techpreneur. In fact, it sounds an awful like Matt.

The Florida native and self-professed late bloomer’s focus has taken him from military service to law school and ultimately to the ranks of Internet founder.

His latest venture, EditLift, offers on-demand, cost-efficient, high-quality proofreading and editing services that guarantees a fast turnaround using a software as a service (SaaS) platform. Wise and his colleagues have developed a business model that provides a stream of income for an online community of qualified professional editors and proofreaders who can manage their workloads with the SaaS platform. Users of EditLift have an opportunity to submit their work for a free estimate before they commit to paying the $3.99 per page rate. Simply put, EditLift relies on crowdsourcing to produce outcomes satisfactory to contractors and clients.

EditLift is Wise’s response to the scores of professionals who lost jobs and business during the economic downturn. Considering research on crowdsourcing and the movement towards outsourcing, Wise came up with a plan that created a stream of income for the under employed and unemployed. A sense of community service coupled with a good business acumen informed the concept of EditLift. Matt says,

Historically, there have always been people who work as freelancers. There is a significant percentage of the labor pool that freelances. Basically, we started to look more at writing, editorial and publishing. There was no one vehicle that offered affordable editorial services with a quick turnaround.

But that’s the soft side of the model. Matt calls the most intricate details of his business model “cosembling” or collaborating and assembling. Cosembling began when Wise came together with a team of colleagues, all of whom have skill sets important to developing an Internet property.

He explains it this way,

Cosembling is like incubating. For cosembling, you have to focus on a product or service that requires little capital to build a prototype, and can be launched in a short period of time. We only focus on businesses where you have a revenue model. You bring together the right team to develop a prototype, build it out, and determine to progress to different iterations as you monitor its success.

Wise noted the financing model for start-ups is rapidly changing. You don’t need a large amount of money to start a business. Entrepreneurs are building prototypes to prove market viability, and increase a property’s valuation without feeling the pressure of V.C. money weighing down on the product and its producers. To that end, Wise is a proponent of entrepreneurial freedom.

EditLift is the first in a family of Web services using SaaS and the cosembling model. Apparently, the lion isn’t ready to rest under the tree.
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CloudMade raises $12.3 million

CloudMade, a mapping database company that serves application developers, device manufacturers and wireless carriers, has raised $12.3 million in a Series B investment round led by new investor Greylock Partners, which joins existing investor Sunstone Capital.
CloudMade, which has offices in Menlo Park, London and Kiev, uses crowdsourcing to build its map database. Juha Christensen is CEO and chairman.
Greylock Partner Arnon Dinur has joined CloudMade's board of directors.
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Crowdsourcing Production Costs, Web Drama Hosts Web-a-Thon to Fund New Season

BY STEPHANIE SCHOMER Today

Web series Anyone But Me is launching its first-ever Web-a-Thon Tuesday to crowd source funding for its third season. The event is the first of its kind in the world of online TV, and will need to raise $120,000 in just three days to bring the show back.
The series, which calls Blip.tv home, has been praised as a teen drama for the ethnically and sexually diverse post-9/11 generation. It has received honors from both the Webby and Streamy awards, but the Web-a-Thon is its biggest hurdle yet. If successful, it could spark a new trend in the Web TV industry as shows search for funding.
“We ruled out the subscription model because we don’t want to limit our reach,” says Susan Miller, who created the show with Tina Cesa Ward. The series received private funding for the first two seasons. “Everyone’s scrambling to find a business paradigm to sustain the Web, and this is kind of a thrilling experiment. The best thing about the Web is inclusivity.”
To capitalize on the tremendous amount of support the show's 5 million viewers have expressed, the cast and crew of Anyone But Me are pulling out all the stops. In addition to original videos launching at 4 p.m. over the next few days (including a walking tour of New York City locations from the show, interviews with the actors, and an elusive cast competition), the team will host an online auction where fans can bid on prizes from a walk-on role to lunch with the creators, among others.
“We wanted to make something for our fans beyond their expectations, something to demonstrate how we regard them as collaborators, in a way,” says Miller, whose past credits include The L Word and Thirtysomething. “If we’re going to ask them to sacrifice even just a few dollars, then we have to show up for them in a major way.”
Should the show not reach its fundraising goal in full, Miller is hopeful that they’ll be able to attract financing or sponsorship to support their remaining needs. “There are companies out there who may not know us, but they’re going to hear from us,” she says. “I mean, five million views! For an original scripted drama! Come on.”

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Trada Raises $5.75M From Google Ventures To Crowdsource Search Engine Marketing

by Jason Kincaid - Techcrunch



Google’s AdWords may be one of the most successful products in Internet history, but it’s fair to say that most small and medium-sized business owners aren’t exactly experts when it comes to writing their ad copy or picking out keywords — in fact, there’s a whole industry of consultants and firms who specialize in doing just that. Enter Trada, a startup that launched in March that’s looking to help turn the industry on its head with the power of crowdsourcing. The company just closed a $5.75 million Series C round of funding led by Google Ventures, with participation from previous investor Foundry Group. Google Ventures Partner Rich Miner will be joining the board. And yes, this means Google’s VC arm is taking a dip into paid search marketing, which is sure to raise a few eyebrows.

The basic premise of Trada is to make running an online ad campaign as easy as possible: specify a budget you’re willing to spend on ads, decide which advertising platforms you want your ads to appear on (the site currently supports Bing, Yahoo, and Google), and enter how much you’re willing to pay-per-click or per acquisition. Finish those steps and you’re done — the site sources the heavy lifting, like choosing thousands of keywords to target and writing ad copy, to its community of experts.

At first glance, the fusion of crowdsourcing with online advertising campaigns sounds like a terrible idea — it’s easy to throw away money when someone clueless is managing your account. But Trada CEO Niel Robertson says that the company goes to great lengths to ensure that their “crowd” consists of a group of vetted, seasoned advertising experts. Each expert must be AdWords certified, and they also have to pass Trada’s own 45 minute exam. And users tapping into the platform can see the track record of each expert, so it should be fairly easy to tell if someone isn’t up to par.

Each ad campaign actually has multiple experts working on it, which Robertson says can help diversify the number of good keywords your campaign is targeting (an average campaign on the site has over 6,500 keywords and 110 ads). Each expert is incented to create ads that perform well, because they get rewarded for each click/acquisition their ad receives in the wild (Trada takes a 25% cut of this reward). Trada is also experimenting with incentives that will encourage experts to work together — for example, experts could receive a bigger cut of the proceeds if the aggregate click-through rate of a client’s campaign hits a certain threshold.

Given the fact that this directly involves Google’s bread and butter AdWords, the Google Ventures connection is obviously going to draw some scrutiny. Robertson says that Trada fully expects this; to stay as above-board as possible, it has gone through its policies and practices with Google account managers to ensure that everything is in order. That won’t silence the critics, but it’s a start.

Trada plans to use the money in part to grow internationally and also to work toward launching support for display ads. When the time comes to launch display, Robertson says that Trada will likely help solve another piece of the puzzle: you’ll be able to outsource both the placement of your ads and have another set of professionals working on creative.

Including this round, Trada has raised a total of $7.95 million since it was founded two years ago.
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Crowdsourcing documentary about Living off the grid

Off-Grid.net is crowdsourcing

–if you live or work off the grid (ie without utility power or water), upload a video to help build a global portrait of an off-grid day.

Your crowdsourcing contribution to the “Off-Grid Life in a Day” could be a brief think-piece like this clip of Beans of Maine author Carolyn Chute.

It could be a guided tour of your smallholding. It might even be a glimpse of the tasks your household performs during a typical day, from chopping wood to pumping water to relaxing quietly on the back porch

Ridley Scott has a project is called “Life in a Day,” a collage of a 24-hour period of human life. “Off Grid Life in a Day” is also a 24-hour snapshot, but focused on those people who are usually under-represented in the national media.

Those who live off the grid -off- are improving energy security, adding to diversity, and reducing the carbon footprint of America. But they do not have a voice because they are scattered and outside the mainstream, often out of choice.
The off-grid.net web site has a free LandBuddy service which connects you with people who are looking to live off grid, people who are currently living off grid and people who want to help others live off grid.

LandBuddy contains a map that allows you to locate others living off the grid in any geographic location. Current off-gridders can find and connect with their off grid neighbors. If you are thinking about living off the grid, this is the perfect place to look for advice and resources from people who are already living this way.

Please upload your videos as soon as possible to http://www.off-grid.net/videos
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Are you a Film Threat?

Nowadays, it seems like everyone is a filmmaker, or has a friend that’s a filmmaker. Everyone’s got that great project in the works, everyone’s going to re-define the state of cinema as we know it… but are they really? Are there any filmmakers or films worthy of being called a true “Film Threat” anymore? We here at Film Threat like to think that those filmmakers and films are out there, and we want to help find even more.

Are you a filmmaker? Are you currently in production and looking for funds via Kickstarter, IndieGoGo or other crowdfunding efforts? Let Film Threat know about your project and, once a week, we’ll showcase one project we deem to be worthy of being a “Certified Film Threat in Progress.”

That’s right, every Monday, starting July 25, 2010, we’re going to feature one film or film-related project in progress that we feel is worth your and our time. From there, it’s up to our passionate, film-hungry and film-savvy readers to decide whether they want to take that extra step to help make these projects in progress a reality. It’s then up to you, the filmmaker, to live up to the faith we’re putting in you and your efforts by giving you such lofty praise as featuring you and your project as a top story on our site (seriously, you want this; studio films and indies alike routinely angle for space and feature stories on our site).

So how to you get featured on Film Threat? How does your project become a “Certified Film Threat in Progress”? Simple, fill out the form below and send it on. We’ll begin reviewing the various projects that come in, and if you tickle our fancy and we find you and your project worthy, you’ll hear from us as we focus our editorial efforts on you and yours...
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Net worth: Filmmaker and Hamden native Dennis Peters wants artists to know that the Internet is a great funding tool

By Donna Doherty, Register Arts Editor
ddoherty@newhavenregister.com

Dennis Peters is about to release his first full-length feature film, and he wants to thank you and everyone else who made it possible.

The Hamden native, who splits his time between Santa Monica and New Haven, is one of a growing number of artists using the Internet to fund creative ventures. It’s a source of funding that’s been around for about two years now, but he’s been so happy with his experience that, “I wanted to share it with other artists, because I know a lot of New Haven artists, and I’m not sure everyone knows about it,” he said in the North Branford-based Inner Space Sound Labs of his friend and collaborator Scott Amore.

“New Haven is an arts town. There are so many people I know here that could use this type of crowd funding for their projects. Raising a small amount of money is difficult,” Peters says.

A steady, cooling rain drummed on the roof of the studio, where the two were working on some promotional videos for Dixon Drums of Bloomfield, one of the clients of Peters’ Heavybag Media marketing company in Santa Monica.

When “I’m Not Adam” is released in January, with premieres planned in Los Angeles and New Haven, Peters will have funded $6,000 of the projected $20,000 budget with money from people who found his proposal online on Kickstarter.org, liked what they saw, and coughed up some cash for the venture.

The Manhattan-based Kickstarter.org was founded last year by eMusic director Yancey Strickler and Perry Chen, who recently held their own Kickstarter Film Festival, the invitees selected from the more than 1,500 who’ve created projects using their site.

“I found out about it on Twitter,” says Peters, 53, who is a Hamden High School graduate and has a film degree from the University of Bridgeport. “Four months ago, I saw someone promote their Kickstarter campaign on Twitter. I clicked on and liked what I saw.”

What he saw was a group of creative endeavors looking for angels. “It could be a film, a book, a comic book, a live event. Kickstarter says yea or nay to it. Then you’re on your own. You can record a video explaining what your project is and what you’re doing,” he says.

Each project has a target money goal and shows a time frame in which that money must be raised. Kickstarter helps the clients decide on that time frame, which can span anywhere from 30-90 days.

Investors are encouraged with rewards that vary with the level of the pledge: things like tickets to an opening night, manufactured goods, plaques at sites, first editions.

Right now on Kickstarter, though it’s heavy on funding requests for short films and documentaries, you’ll see community ventures such as “Center Without Walls,” a cultural venture that “will bring arts programming to some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city,” a community Ping-Pong table, a cupcake business, a request to help students learn math easier (“Make Math Cool” video) and even a request to provide a haven for geeks, called “Uberdork Cafe: A Dork with a Dream.”

The Amazon.com-backed site has a couple of rules which make it different from some other sites such as IndieGoGo.com. One of those is that if a project doesn’t reach its goal money on Kickstarter, it doesn’t get any of what was raised, so there’s great incentive for the requesters to keep on top of the campaign, and push. Peters estimates he spent “about 6-8 hours a day,” doing just that, with Twitter his favorite networking tool of choice.

“About 50 percent reach their goal, I’m told. But they also say if you reach 25 percent of your funding goal, 90 percent will go on to reach the goal,” Peters says, which he did July 9.

It’s like a whole virtual fund-raising world that also, says Peters, has tremendous additional marketing benefits.

“... Funding is only one reason, and may not be the most important,” says Peters. “What you’re doing is building an audience for your project before you do it. If you get 100 people to invest even $10, those 100 people are invested in part of your project. When you’re done, you have 100 people talking about your project, they’re talking to their friends, putting it on their Facebook page or on Twitter or blogging.

“You’re building a big network, something which can be of greater value than money,” he says. “I have people invested in my film that will get the word out, people who are excited to see the film and who can say ‘I have money in that film.’”

That word-of-mouth buzz is no small deal, considering that, a Reuters article in June noted that, according to Baseline Intelligence, for the past seven years, for “every dollar spent on producing a major film, the studios have been spending 51 cents-58 cents to release and market it in the United States and Canada ...,” which means that “the average 2009 release had to gross $186 million to recoup production and domestic-releasing costs ...”.

That refers to major films, not small, indie projects such as Peters’, but by not having to invest so heavily in marketing (which can be an additional one-third) and by self-distributing, he was able to put the majority of his money into casting, thereby ensuring quality actors for his psychological thriller.

“I’m Not Adam,” which Peters wrote and directed, is the story of an ordinary guy who is mistaken for a celebrity that someone is out to kill. He is pursued through the streets and back alleys of downtown L.A., encountering a number of strangers who may or may not be connected to him. To survive, he decides he has to find his doppelganger.

Peters, who cast all L.A. actors, also has had the benefit of the generosity of friends, like Amore, a well-known New Haven area musician and producer who is donating his time as post-production music supervisor, and will be writing and recording the soundtrack here in the woodsy studio behind the log cabin he shares with his girlfriend; and Robert Sacchetti, a location scout, sound man and actor.

“I could not have made this film without a few key people who agreed to work on the film for no pay,” Peters readily admits.

He and Wallingford native Amore met at the New Haven Film Fest years ago, and were also neighbors in an apartment building as well as in a commercial building on Hamilton Street, where Peters had founded One Black Shoe, a TV commercial production company.

Heavybag Media, which Peters co-founded with his wife, Jackie (whom he married in Edgerton Park with arts maven Cheever Tyler serving as justice of the peace), is an online marketing company which caters primarily to entertainment and technology clients. His best-known are Sun Microsystems, Dixon Drums and Gibraltar Hardware. He films commercials for various clients and still maintains a small office for Heavybag in New Haven. Heavybag also marketed several Warner Bros. recording artists and the 2009 Miramax film “Extract,” starring Jason Bateman.

“I’m Not Adam” will travel to festivals to be determined, and Peters wants to make it available on Netflix, iTunes and DVD.
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Google-Funded Pixazza Raises $12 Million For Crowdsourced ‘AdSense For Images’

Pixazza, a Google-backed photo tagging service that has been compared to an “AdSense for Images,” has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Shasta Ventures, with Series A investors August Capital, CMEA Capital and Google Ventures also participating in the round. This brings the startup’s total funding to nearly $20 million.

Pixazza allows publishers to identify, tag and match products found within online images on their sites and then link them back to the inventories of Pixazza’s network of advertisers. The service, which can be integrated in a site by adding a single line of code, allows consumers to browse the photos featured on a site and mouse over it to reveal information and pricing about similar products, and if desired, click to purchase.

The startup has a vast database of products to include images and tags related to the entertainment, fashion, travel, home and sports industries. Pixazza’s tagging technology is also compelling; the startup crowdsources workers to list products and tag them with the appropriate link to a retailer. Additionally, Pixazza shares advertising and affiliate revenues with publishers.

The company’s co-founder and CTO James Everingham thought of the idea for Pixazza after his wife was trying to find a pair of designer shoes that were worn in the movie “Sex In The City.” Upon realizing the astounding price of the shoes, Everingham’s wife ended up buying a similar-looking shoe in a store for half the cost. Everingham says that he felt that the experience of finding similar items you see in photos could be a valuable business.

Turns out he’s right.

The company has also announced that it reaches more than 25 million unique visitors per month through its 75-plus publishers, which include US Weekly and Access Hollywood. Of these visitors, more than 70% are based in the U.S. Additionally, Pixazza says that the startup delivers commerce-enabled photos at a rate of 8 billion image views per year, a 60% increase in the last three months.

Pixazza plans to use its new fund fuel product growth and expand to international markets. Already Pixazza has been launching new products in the past year to help make its technology more interactive. For example, Pixazza just launched Shopdot, a service for creating branded, hosted storefronts for publisher websites. And today, the company has announced the availability of a new self-serve publishing tool that allows anyone to turn static images into more interactive ones.

Previously, Pixazza was working on a client basis with its service. But today, the self-service platform, which is still in private beta, helps make Pixazza even more like an ‘AdSense for Images.’ Publishers can identify, tag and match products within the body of online images and immediately link them to Pixazza advertisers’ product inventories. Pixazza’s platform will aggregate datafeeds from merchants into a catalog of more than ten million apparel, home, electronic, sports, travel and automotive products. Pixazza also provides full text search to find similar products to those in the images on publishers’ sites.

There’s no doubt that interactive advertising technologies like Pixazza are catching on and even attracting the attention of search and advertising giant Google. Everingham declined to name exact numbers but says that click through rates are significantly higher than regular banner ads.

Everingham says that Pixazza is only at the beginning of what could be a very successful and profitable experience. “There’s currently three trillion images on the internet,” he sad. “We want to turn every one into an interactive experience.”

Pixazza faces competition from Like.com, Image Space Media, GumGum and others.
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How Communities Crowd Source On Search Engines

by Laurie Sullivan

PageRank is a community-derived ranking scheme for search. I find crowd sourcing campaigns fascinating, but hadn't thought about Google's search engine technology as a measure of community acceptance until Digg Chief Scientist Anton Kast mentioned it from the audience during a DigitalLA panel Wednesday night. The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles provided the perfect location for the discussion that delved into crowd sourcing and curating. I'll tell you why later.

Participating in DigitalLA's Crowd Source to Curation panel allowed me to turn the question to Kast when the topic switched to algorithms and semantic search queries. I asked Kast when Digg will provide these types of search option after panelist Chas Edwards, Digg's chief revenue officer, explained semantic search queries present a challenge for news curators.

Aside from "like," "share," and "digg," buttons that send signals from communities, algorithms determine most news content, even on search engines, Kast told DigitalLA attendees. Take Google PageRank, for example. The signal provides one of many unique insights into the value of the content on the page. Using PageRank and other factors helps to push up in ranking the content from Web pages and sites.

For Digg, having the ability to serve up content that community members want to read before they ask for has become "the holy grail," Kast says. Serving up queries based on personal information and semantics, rather than the relationship with people, presents difficulties. Google, Bing and Yahoo have tried to perfect this type of search for years. It takes sophisticated algorithms and lots of data. Google may have solved that roadblock for travel-related searches with the acquisition of ITA Software for $700 million.

Digg's problem is a double edge sword because if the algorithms get it wrong the error introduces mistrust and lack of credibility, Kast says. Incentives for humans to like, share or digg a piece of content provides a stronger connection between that piece of content and the brand.

Crowd sourcing worked well for The Recording Academy when it launched a marketing campaign called "We're All Fans." The campaign, completely constructed by social media elements from music fans, promoted this year's Grammy Awards telecast. Community involvement led people for the first time to send around content to promote the event. They talked and blogged about it.

The campaign demonstrated to The Recording Academy that the more respect, voice and involvement it gave to the community, the deeper the relationship companies will have, according to Evan Greene, chief marketing officer at The Recording Academy. Crowd sourced user-generated videos created the tapestry for the spots, he says. "It opened our eyes about how impactful it can be," he says, adding that ratings for the telecast rose 35% this year, but acknowledges "you can't contribute any one thing to the success. Everyone did their job."
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