What Does crowdsourcing Mean
The idea of crowdsourcing is not part of the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ). The concept comes from the English language and is developed from two terms: crowd (which can be translated as "crowd" ) and outsourcing (which refers to the "outsourcing of resources" ).
Crowdsourcing, therefore, refers to a massive collaboration provided by individuals who are not part of an entity or institution . It is an open modality of joint work .
The notion is linked to a call addressed to an indefinite number of people, who contribute their ideas for the development of a certain project. The one who makes the call, in this way, outsources a task.
Other ways crowdsourcing is known are open task outsourcing and distributed open collaboration . One of its most important characteristics is that the work of the community or of the group of individuals who are openly called to participate in a project replaces what people or contracted companies would traditionally do.
The term was coined in 2006 by writer Jeff Howe , who works for Wired magazine covering topics such as the entertainment industry. Precisely, he used the word crowdsourcing for the first time in an article entitled " The emergence of crowdsourcing ", in that publication.
Howe pointed out that through crowdsourcing we access the most suitable individuals for the task, since the call is open and the probabilities that those who do not feel prepared to give their best will respond are lower than in a traditional hiring. In addition to their performance in solving the problems raised by the campaign leader, collaborators can share their own ideas, a factor that increases the degree of diversity.
Among the tasks most often carried out through outsourcing are the following: collaboration for the capture, systematization, processing and analysis of large amounts of data; the improvement and implementation of various algorithms; the realization of a given design, such as the characters and levels of a video game in a crowdfunding campaign.
This concept has become very popular in recent years, both among those who take advantage of it to carry out projects and those who write about it and the advantages it offers in different fields, whether research or business. Internet, and more specifically web 2.0 , is essential for most of these types of proposals.
Beyond these definitions, the truth is that there is no single way to understand crowdsourcing. In general it can be said that is a work collaborative and voluntary.
Suppose a town newspaper plans to publish a report on how much money people spend on food. With this objective, it launches a call for neighbors to collect tickets and invoices for this type of purchase for a week, digitize them and send them via email, detailing how their family group is made up. Once the deadline has passed, a journalist from the newspaper is in charge of compiling the information and creating various statistics that are reflected in the special report. Arguably, the newspaper article in question was carried out thanks to crowdsourcing.
A beer brand , on the other hand, may invite consumers to come up with a new slogan . The firm's marketing experts will select ten phrases, which will be voted on via the Internet. The author of the phrase that is chosen, as a prize, will receive twenty liters of beer per month free of charge for one year. In this way, the company in question appeals to crowdsourcing.