Crowdsourcing For Dummies E-Book

David Alan Grier

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 645

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Give your business the edge with crowd-power!

Crowdsourcing is an innovative way of outsourcing tasks, problems or requests to a group or community online. There are lots of ways business can use crowdsourcing to their advantage: be it crowdsourcing product ideas and development, design tasks, market research, testing, capturing or analyzing data, and even raising funds. It offers access to a wide pool of talent and ideas, and is an exciting way to engage the public with your business.

Crowdsourcing For Dummies is your plain-English guide to making crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and open innovation work for you. It gives step-by-step advice on how to plan, start and manage a crowdsourcing project, where to crowdsource, how to find the perfect audience, how best to motivate your crowd, and tips for troubleshooting.

Leseprobe

Crowdsourcing For Dummies®

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2013

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-119-94040-1 (pbk), ISBN 978-1-119-94384-6 (ebk), ISBN 978-1-119-94386-0 (ebk), ISBN 978-1-119-94385-3 (ebk)

Printed in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

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Crowdsourcing For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/crowdsourcinguk to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

What You’re Not to Read

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organised

Part I: Understanding Crowdsourcing Basics

Part II: Looking at the Different Forms of Crowdsourcing

Part III: Building Skill

Part IV: Getting All You Can Get from the Crowd

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Understanding Crowdsourcing Basics

Chapter 1: People Power: Getting a Feel for Crowdsourcing

What Is This Thing Called Crowdsourcing?

Seeing how crowdsourcing works

Looking at crowdsourcing forms

Considering Why People Crowdsource

Introducing three key strengths

Benefitting from crowdsourcing

Considering reliability

Being a Crowdworker

Becoming a Crowdsourcer

Chapter 2: Getting to Know the Forms of Crowdsourcing and Crowdmarkets

Harnessing the Power of Divided Labour

Keeping the job whole

Splitting the job into big pieces

Dividing the job as small as you can

Letting the crowd divide the job

Using crowdsourcing to raise money

Looking at the Rules that Govern How Crowdmarkets Work

Distinguishing between contract and contest markets

Understanding collaborative and independent crowdworking

Combining the two rules

Chapter 3: Infiltrating the Crowd

Following the Crowdworker’s Steps

Taking Lessons from Your Time as a Crowdworker

Lesson 1: Crowdworkers have names and reputations

Lesson 2: Crowds need training

Lesson 3: Crowds want clear instructions

Lesson 4: Crowds are free to move

Joining the Staff of Wikipedia

Registering as a worker

Choosing a task

Completing a task

Submitting a task

Leaping into the Market with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Registering as a worker

Selecting the task

Qualifying and completing the task

Donning the White Lab Coat: Zooniverse

Chapter 4: Joining the Crowdforce

Deciding to Join the Crowdforce

Considering Your Options

Looking at microtasks

Competing for the contest

Lining up for macrotasks

Wading into self-organised crowds

Searching for careers in crowdfunding

Getting Up and Running on a Macrotask Crowdmarket

Choosing a market

Setting yourself up on the market

Building your portfolio

Protecting Yourself as a Macrotasker

Making the Bid in Macrotasking

The proposal

The covering letter

The résumé

Setting the price

Learning from the process

Completing the Macrotask

Remembering the goal

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Working across cultures

Keeping good records

Getting an extra recommendation

Part II: Looking at the Different Forms of Crowdsourcing

Chapter 5: Creating Crowdcontests

Reaping the Benefits of Crowdcontests

Deepening understanding

Faster, better, cheaper

Understanding Types of Crowdcontest

Running a Crowdcontest

Stating the goal

Writing the rules

Publicising the results

Improving the Crowdcontest

Splitting the contest

Building a stronger crowd

Running a series of contests

Considering an Example: The Business Logo

Running a logo contest yourself

Using a contest service to run the contest for you

Chapter 6: Raising Money with Crowdfunding

Knowing the Basics of Crowdfunding

Seeing crowdfunding as a community activity

Using the crowdmarket

Deciding between all-or-nothing funding or partial funding

Understanding the fee

Running a Crowdfunding Project

Writing the budget

Describing your project

Setting a deadline for a decision

Contacting the crowd

Considering an Example: Creating a Playground

Building a budget

Writing a letter

Setting a timeline

Getting the crowd

Accumulating Equity for a Company

Making a pitch

Using a platform

Paying the fees and getting the funds

Attracting the crowd

Waiting for results

Examining the results

Using non-equity funding

Chapter 7: Making Use of Macrotasks

Getting to Grips with Macrotasking

Seeing the Benefits of Macrotasks

Identifying Macrotasks

Thinking process, not organisation

Identifying independent tasks

Choosing what’s important

Finding a fixed deadline

Requiring special skills

Preparing the Macrotask

Naming the manager

Putting together a statement of work for macrotask workers

Beginning the Macrotask

Choosing a site

Posting the project

Inviting workers to your job

Choosing a Macrotasker

Reading the covering letter

Reviewing the proposal

Assessing the portfolio

Checking the reputation

Judging qualifications

Interviewing

Making the selection

Managing the work

Protecting intellectual property

Ending the Macrotask

Paying the macrotasker and closing the books

Assessing the experience

Considering an Example: Creating an App

Checking that your task is a macrotask

Writing the statement of work

Posting the job

Hiring the macrotasker

Following the work

Ending the macrotask

Chapter 8: Managing with Microtasks

Identifying Tasks That You Can Microsource

Knowing How the Microtasking Process Works

Keeping tasks short and simple

Creating the basic task

Finding the basic data

Writing the instructions

Pricing the tasks

Training and validating workers

Checking the results

Assembling the work

Working through an Example with Mechanical Turk

Creating the task

Laying out the work

Starting with a test run

Reviewing the work and retrieving the results

Reviewing the prices of your microtasks

Chapter 9: Combining the Intelligence of Self-Organised Crowds

Getting to Grips with Self-Organised Crowds

Determining What You Need the Crowd to Do: Information Gathering and Decision Making

Gathering information

Making a decision

Gathering and deciding

Designing the Process

Finding the crowd

Preparing clear rules

Motivating the crowd

Looking at the results

Organising a Prediction Market

Finding prediction markets

Establishing the rules

Laying down the rules

Assessing the result

Part III: Building Skill

Chapter 10: Engaging the Crowd with Your Project

Getting Started with Crowdbuilding

Knowing what motivates the crowd

Identifying the talent and resources you need

Adapting your strategy for public and private crowds

Inviting People to Join Your Crowd

Seeding the crowd

Engaging on YouTube

Granting bragging rights

Fostering Community Spirit

Building an online base

Showing how tasks contribute to the overall goal

Identifying benefits

Updating the crowd on progress

Sustaining the Crowd’s Interest

Teaching and Training

Showing the outcome

Leading the crowd through the tasks

Engaging on YouTube (again)

Chapter 11: Instructing the Crowd

Preparing the Fundamental Message: Writing a Statement of Work

Structuring carefully

Making clarity your goal

Looking at an example statement of work

Connecting the Kneebone to the Thighbone: Creating Instructions

Thinking about who does what to what

Deciding the order of instructions

Getting Feedback on Your Guidance

Chapter 12: Crowdsourcing with Social Media

Knowing the Benefits and the Limitations of Social Media Crowdsourcing

Building a Private Crowd with Social Media

Doing Simple Crowdsourcing with Social Media

Crowdfunding: Fundraising with Facebook

Macrotasking: Looking for freelancers with LinkedIn

Crowdcontests: Turning to Twitter

Microtasking: Translating via a blog

Turning the Process Upside Down: Using a Crowdsourcing Tool

Crowdfunding: Going fundraising

Crowdcontests: Modifying marketing methods

Microtasking and crowdsurveys: Asking for Opinions on Facebook

Microtasking: Reading the tweet leaves

Recognising the Difference between Social Media and Social Research

Chapter 13: Picking Your Platform

Getting the Benefits of a Platform

Raising the crowd

Knowing what other people know

Using standardised crowdsourced services

Getting a helping hand with bookkeeping

Cutting the risk factor

Finding the Right Crowd

Reviewing products

Checking out individual portfolios

Looking for the Right Support

Guiding your project

Acting as mediator

Protecting intellectual property

Deciding How Much You Want to Do

Reading the Fine Print

Understanding the cost

Expecting a refund

Knowing your responsibilities

Doing a Little Comparison Shopping

Checking out the contest providers

Connecting with the macrotaskers

Looking at options for microtasking

Finding the best funders

Chapter 14: Managing Your Crowd

Starting with the Right Balance of Skills

Choosing the Right People

Managing the Crowd Through the Project

Using a consistent voice

Keeping in touch

Tracking milestones

Giving the crowd space to work

Respecting Workers’ Rights

Keeping on Top of the Details: Payroll and Accounting

Incentivising to Build Quality

Rewarding best practices

Taking inspiration from gamification

Recognising Trouble

Knowing your options

Computing the price of failure

Treating the cause, not the symptom

Stopping a Project

Exiting firmly and gracefully

Protecting your intellectual property

When Crowds Attack: Dealing with Angry Crowds

Assessing the situation

Handling a discontented worker

Recognising structural problems

Managing the public relations problem

Chapter 15: Learning on the Job

Following the Cycle of Continuous Improvement

Using the Cycle in Crowdsourcing

Anticipating trouble

Keeping an eye out for stumbling blocks

Reading the signs from the crowd

Handling the Unexpected

Accepting bad results

Stopping, revising and restarting

Demanding a refund

Paying and trashing

Lowering the Stakes with a Pilot Run

Adapting a Crowdfunding Campaign According to Results

Changing the means and the message

Changing your platform

Changing the goal

Part IV: Getting All You Can Get from the Crowd

Chapter 16: Combining Microtasks and Preparing Workflow

Discerning the Difference between Parallel and Serial Microtasks

Doing the job all at once: Parallel tasks

Putting one thing after another: Serial tasks

Minimising Error

Appreciating the value of serial tasks

Duplicating parallel tasks

Working through an Example: Devising Workflow and Making Decisions in Mechanical Turk

Starting with parallel tasks

Advancing to serial tasks

Combining parallel and serial tasks

Going for Gold: The Many Benefits of Workflow

Chapter 17: Crowd Reporting: Using the Crowd to Gather Information and News

Understanding Why People Use Crowd Reporting

Sorting Eight Billion Stories

Helping the crowd focus

Combining amateurs and experts

Gathering Information Geographically with Ushahidi

Rallying the crowd to Ushahidi

Deploying Ushahidi

Summarising the results

Getting the Benefits while Avoiding the Perils of Crowd Reporting

Understanding the nature of the crowd

Knowing who’s talking: The crowd effect

Knowing what the crowd believes: Gresham’s Law

Chapter 18: Initiating Innovation

Understanding the Forms of Innovation Crowdsourcing

Asking for a Little Insight: Classes of Innovation

Crowdsourcing for novelty

Crowdsourcing for improvement

Crowdsourcing for advantage

Planning for Innovation

Planning for new ideas

Bringing the unexpected into your plan with a crowdcontest

Running with the Right Crowd

Knowing the different types of crowd

Matching your plans with the best crowd

Building New Products and Services with Co-creation

Generating ideas and defining products

Designing with the crowd

Testing, testing, testing

Giving the product to the world

Considering an Example: Restructuring a Business with InnoCentive

Chapter 19: Preparing Your Organisation

Focusing on Crowdsourcing Elements of Processes

Planning for the Future

Navigating a Trial Run

Building Commitment

Knowing the Limits

Bracing for the Unknowns

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 20: Following the Future of Crowdsourcing: Ten (Or So) Websites to Watch

Discovering the State of Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing.org

Reading the Morning News: Daily Crowdsource

Getting the European Perspective: crowdsourcingblog.de

Meeting the Leaders: CrowdConf and Crowdopolis

Tracking Equity Crowdfunding: Crowdcube and Indiegogo

Monitoring the Growth of the Global Crowd: Clickworker and Trabajo

Expanding the Scope of Crowdcontests: Kaggle

Promoting Innovation: AHHHA and Innovation Exchange

Building New Microtasking Platforms: MobileWorks and Tagasauris

Macrotasking in the Boardroom: 10EQS

Chapter 21: Ten Best Practices to Adopt

Doing Things Step by Step

Copying What Others Have Done

Paying Attention to the Price

Talking with Your Crowd

Listening to the Crowd

Using Social Media

Publicising Accomplishments

Bringing the Crowd into the Decisions

Doing the Same Job Two Ways

Giving a Gift to the Crowd

Chapter 22: Ten Success Stories

Creating the SXSW Festival T-shirt

Developing Smith & Kraus’s Mobile App

Spending Time with Mr Bentham

Generating a New Movie Recommendation Method for Netflix

Building a National Treasure Trove

Running a Video Campaign for Audio-Technica

Getting USA Today on Mobile Phones

Analysing Viruses with Foldit

Writing Descriptions for Magnum Photos

Setting Up Coffee Joulie with the Crowd’s Backing

Chapter 23: Ten Crowdsourcing Blunders to Avoid

Thinking Crowdsourcing Is Easy

Failing to Review the Work of the Crowd

Not Knowing Who’s in the Crowd

Failing to Do a Trial Run

Putting the Crowdsourcing Ahead of the Job

Losing Your Reputation

Hiding from the Crowd

Assuming That All Crowdworkers Understand

Having Too Much Faith in the Market

About the Author

Dedication

Cheat Sheet

Introduction

Crowdsourcing is the latest revolution wrought by the technologies of computing and communication – a revolution that brings people together and harnesses their collective intelligence. The power of crowdsourcing is such that it’s created political revolutions and toppled governments. At turbulent times, crowdsourcing has deployed the crowd – the group of people who actually do the work required – as a collective witness to follow the actions of governments, record speeches and monitor elections. And yet, at a more modest level in everyday life, crowdsourcing can still revolutionise the way you go about things. Crowdsourcing enables you to work with people who have specialised skills, to engage massive groups of workers, to collect data that you couldn’t have gathered previously and to offer advice that’s far beyond experience.

Crowdsourcing can change your life. It connects you to a massive crowd of people who can bring their skill, experience and knowledge to everything you do in your business, your non-profit organisation and even in your daily life. When you work with the crowd, you no longer work alone. You have the power of the crowd behind you, a crowd that will change the way you work, the way you plan and even the very way you think.

About This Book

Crowdsourcing For Dummies is here to help you become a crowdsourcer – a person who manages the crowdsourcing process, whether in a business, a non-profit organisation or just in everyday life. This book gives you the tools you need for each stage of the crowdsourcing process. I show you:

How to identify the activities you currently undertake that may benefit from crowdsourcing

How to determine the best form of crowdsourcing to use for your project

How to engage the crowd

How to get started, see a project through to completion and start again with a new project

In this book, I give you a broad perspective on crowdsourcing. I look at the common forms of crowdsourcing, such as crowdfunding and crowdcontests, as well as the lesser-known forms, such as self-organised crowds, so that you can think about different approaches to using the crowd and the ways in which you can best use crowdsourcing to suit your own needs or those of your organisation.

This book is also here to help you understand the information about crowdsourcing that you can find on the Internet. The Internet is constantly producing new information about crowdsourcing and is an important source of reference, but this book puts that information into context.

Conventions Used in This Book

To help you navigate your way through this book, I’ve set up a few straightforward conventions:

I use italics for emphasis and to highlight new words or define terms.

I use bold to indicate the key concepts in a list.

I alternate between male and female pronouns in the chapters to be fair to both genders.

What You’re Not to Read

You’re undoubtedly a wise and experienced individual who can identify the pieces of the book that you should read and the pieces that you can ignore. And although I like to think that you’ll be hanging on my every word, I know that you may not want to read the whole book. If you skip bits of it, you won’t hurt my feelings.

There are sections of the book that you can skip or put aside for later. Sidebars, for example. I love the sidebars, although they usually contain historical or contextual information that’s completely and utterly fascinating but, I admit, not especially useful. Don’t you want to know that many basic forms of crowdsourcing were developed in the American Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression? I certainly enjoy knowing that titbit of info, but you may be able to live without it. Certainly you can be a great crowdsourcer without knowing it. That’s why such stories are in sidebars. You can skip them if want.

Paragraphs marked with the Technical Stuff icon in the margin are also things you can skip if you want to. This icon marks specialised material that you may not need to know. You can do a lot of crowdsourcing without knowing much about technology. You don’t have to make yourself unnecessarily anxious by reading these sections.

One final note: if you’re anxious about technical issues, you can completely skip Chapter 16, about workflow, without feeling bad. The ground I cover in this chapter is fascinating but is really useful only to people who are doing cutting-edge microtasking.

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, I made the following assumptions about you, the reader:

You know something about the current state of the Internet and social media. Certainly, you know about email and probably know something about sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, PayPal and Twitter. You may not use these sites much – I’m okay with that – but you know that they exist and you know what they do.

You know something about work and how you organise tasks. You may work in an office – large or small – or be part of a non-profit organisation, or you may work for yourself. However, you know how to take a job, think about the resources that you need to do it and then actually do the job.

You know a little bit about economics. You don’t have to know much, but you do have to know the basic ideas of supply and demand. Check yourself on this little example. If you want to hire someone for a job, you’ll get more people applying for the position if you offer a high wage for the work than if you offer a low wage. You understand that, right? Good. Then you’re fine with this book.

I had wanted to assume that you were deeply interested in the historical and cultural influences on crowdsourcing and how crowdsourcing is part of the great trends of industrial society. My editor, however, convinced me that I was misguided to make that assumption, so I didn’t. (However, if you are interested in historical and cultural influences, there’s a lovely book on the subject called When Computers Were Human,by yours truly. It’s a great read, but it won’t help you become a great crowdsourcer.)

How This Book Is Organised

Because crowdsourcing is a way of organising people, this book is organised in a way that helps you build your organising skill. It moves from simple ideas to the more complex. The book is split into five parts, and each contains several chapters on the part’s theme. Here is an overview of the parts.

Part I: Understanding Crowdsourcing Basics

Do you know what crowdsourcing is? Do you know how it differs from using social media? Or mob rule? To help, the first two chapters of Part I give you an overview of the material in the rest of Crowdsourcing For Dummies. Chapter 1 gives you an introduction to crowdsourcing and helps you understand the potential benefits of crowdsourcing to you, to your work and to any organisation that may want to use crowdsourcing. Chapter 2 guides you into the rest of the book. It offers an introduction to the different forms of crowdsourcing and then points you to the parts of the book that will be of most use to you.

I also include chapters on how to be a crowdworker. Being a working member of the crowd for a while is a great way to learn more about crowdsourcing – and you can earn money while you do it, too.

Part II: Looking at the Different Forms of Crowdsourcing

Part II divides crowdsourcing into its five basic forms – crowdcontests, crowdfunding, macrotasking, microtasking and self-organised crowds – and provides a thorough introduction to each. Each chapter includes a detailed description of one type of crowdsourcing along with examples that illustrate how to apply it. You may only read one or two of these chapters, because you may want to use only one or two forms of crowdsourcing.

Part III: Building Skill

Part III helps you to develop your skills as a crowdsourcer. It offers a chapter on each of the steps you need to take in order to crowdsource. You may not need to read all of these chapters thoroughly, because you may already possess some of these skills, but you can use them to ensure that you have the basic skills to be a good crowdsourcer.

Chapter 14 is an important chapter, because it deals with the basic ideas for managing crowdsourcing. And in Chapter 15, I look at the idea of continuous improvement, where you always try to identify the weak parts of your work and take steps to make them better in future.

Part IV: Getting All You Can Get from the Crowd

Part IV presents some advanced topics, such as microtask workflow, large-scale data gathering, prediction markets, election monitoring and innovation crowdsourcing. Many of these topics are becoming more and more common and are increasingly easy to do.

Part V: The Part of Tens

The Part of Tens illustrates the current state of crowdsourcing. It presents innovative crowdsourcing platforms, best practices, success stories and worst practices. The chapters in this part are filled with stories about crowdsourcing. Some will be familiar. Some will be new to you. They’re all here to help you understand both the strengths and weaknesses of crowdsourcing, the techniques that work well and those that don’t.

Icons Used in This Book

To help you understand crowdsourcing better and to guide you along the way, this book contains icons in the margins that flag different pieces of information:

This icon identifies suggestions and tips that make crowdsourcing easier.

When you see this icon, expect issues that need special attention, or problems that can easily get you into trouble. You ignore them at your own risk.

I use this icon to identify an important point that’s worth remembering.

This icon highlights stories that illustrate the ideas in each chapter and demonstrate how you can use them. All examples are based on real stories of real people who use crowdsourcing. Some people have allowed me to use their name and the name of their company. You can identify these by the fact that they have full names and real URLs associated with them. For others, I’ve camouflaged the source of the example. If an example begins ‘Emily started crowdsourcing when she ran a flower shop in Livosk’, you can be sure that the source of this story is not named Emily, she doesn’t sell flowers and has never been to Livosk.

Paragraphs with this icon are intended for people with experience in IT. You can skip the information and still understand the basic ideas of crowdsourcing.

This icon marks sections that deal with material that’s used only for the form of crowdsourcing called microtasking. You can skip the paragraph if you’re doing some other form of crowdsourcing, such as crowdcontests.

Where to Go from Here

Chapter 1 is a must-read to get a basic grasp of what crowdsourcing is all about, and Chapter 2 gives you an overview of the different forms of crowdsourcing. From there, you can jump to Part II, where you find detailed descriptions of these different forms. The chapters in that part give you more information about becoming a crowdsourcer.

After you’ve identified the form of crowdsourcing that you’re going to do, head to Part III. There, chapters give you the information that you need to design the job, get it posted and running, and evaluate the results.

Alternatively, you can jump around the book as you like, reading whatever chapter appeals. Use the table of contents to help you navigate your own path. Alongside your reading, I recommend browsing some crowdsourcing websites – you can find examples in Chapter 13.

If you think that you’re ready to become a crowdsourcer, take the next step. Turn the page, and start the journey.

Part I

Understanding Crowdsourcing Basics

For Dummies can help you get started with lots of subjects. Visit www.dummies.com to learn more and do more with For Dummies.

In this part . . .

Bone up on the basics and benefits of crowdsourcing to see what it could do for you and your organisation.

Meet the five different types of crowdsourcing and understand the rules that govern how they operate.

See the inside view on crowdsourcing and gain valuable experience by becoming a working member of the crowd.

Enjoy working in the crowd? Fancy joining a crowdmarket? Want to consider the options open to you? Get the lowdown here on crowdsourcing careers.

Chapter 1

People Power: Getting a Feel for Crowdsourcing

In This Chapter

Understanding the basics of crowdsourcing

Seeing the benefits of crowdsourcing

Joining the crowd as a crowdworker

Following the steps to being a crowdsourcer

You’ve probably heard about crowdsourcing. If you haven’t, you probably won’t be leafing through the pages of this book. However, you may not be aware of the many ways in which you can use crowdsourcing to your advantage or of how crowdsourcing is a powerful way of doing work, organising people, gathering information and raising money.

Many people – the unconverted – think that crowdsourcing is nothing more than putting a question on Facebook and waiting for your friends to answer. Yet it’s much more than that – and much more powerful.