Remember The Milk. Crowdsourcing: A Million Heads is Better than One - ReadWriteWeb. The "wisdom of crowds" is a popular web 2.0 buzzword, popularized by James SurowieckiÄôs book of the same name. At its most basic, the term means that two heads are better than one, and that still more heads will yield even better results.
The wisdom of crowds is all around us these days. Wikipedia is one of the best known examples of the concept at work. Thousands of Wikipedia users have created an encyclopedia that studies have shown is as accurate as traditional volumes like Britannica. Perhaps the best exponent so far of Web 'wisdom of crowds' is Google, which organizes websites based on how they link to each other.
Crowdsourcing can be looked at as an application of the wisdom of crowds concept, in which the knowledge and talents of a group of people is leveraged to create content and solve problems. Crowdsourcing can be broken down in to three categories: 1. creation (like Wikipedia); 2. prediction (like Yahoo! LetÄôs take a look at those... Creation Cambrian House CrowdSpirit digg.
Buzz Game: Home. Wired 14.06: The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D. By Jeff HowePage 1 of 4 next » 1. The Professional Story Tools Story Images Click thumbnails for full-size image: Claudia Menashe needed pictures of sick people. In October 2004, she ran across a stock photo collection by Mark Harmel, a freelance photographer living in Manhattan Beach, California. The National Health Museum has grand plans to occupy a spot on the National Mall in Washington by 2012, but for now it’s a fledgling institution with little money. After several weeks of back-and-forth, Menashe emailed Harmel to say that, regretfully, the deal was off. iStockphoto, which grew out of a free image-sharing exchange used by a group of graphic designers, had undercut Harmel by more than 99 percent. He can’t, of course.
It took a while for Harmel to recognize what was happening. Cambrian House, Home of Crowdsourcing.