Crowdsourcing Doesn't Guarantee Quality... But It Can Be Great Advertising

from the to-crowdsource-or-not-to-crowdsource dept

Earlier this month, BBC Audiobooks America started an audiobook project based on Twitter messages where Neil Gaiman kicked off an exquisite corpse process of stringing together about 1,000 Tweets to forge a storyline. Dozens of Twitter users contributed tweets to be edited into a coherent plot that will be released as a free audiobook download. From this publicity stunt, an approximately 50-page book (or 2-hr audiobook, actually) has been created from Gaiman's fans. And presumably, the collection of tweets could also be remixed and edited -- and improved -- to possibly gain further participation from Gaiman (who contributed the first line of the story and will read aloud the completed audiobook) and the attention of any number of other authors. It's not exactly a brand-new idea to compose a story in this way, but it's a very interesting way to advertise and connect with fans to whet their appetites for more content to come (and even pay for).

However, the crowdsourcing aspect of this particular audiobook has been criticized in detail for exhibiting the worst of literary clichés as well as a meandering plot with too many characters and unresolved arcs. But generalizing this crowd's apparently unsatisfying result to all possible collaborative-author processes seems a bit disingenuous. Perhaps it's one of my pet peeves, but the schadenfreude surrounding crowdsourced works that aren't "as good as Shakespeare" seems to focus too much on some artificial failure, and not the potential or the realized successes. Maybe fiction isn't the best target for collaborative authorship, but the suggestion that collaborative writing won't ever work for good storytelling is far from proven. In fact, many popular stories (TV shows, etc) are written by teams of authors. (So the question could be posed: where does the optimal number of authors arise?) Conversely, the overwhelming number of unsuccessful stories written by single authors should not discourage writers from working alone, either. Bad stories happen.

The real triumph of this crowdwork is that this experiment engaged with its audience and promoted Gaiman and BBCAA for future works. From the BBC's perspective, a ton of content was generated largely for free, and a promotional audiobook was created in just a few days. Had the BBC commissioned a single author to compose a similar work, there wouldn't be any guarantees of a compelling book in the end. And working with a single author might require more complex licensing rights and royalties. So crowdsourcing this project sounds like an advertising coup -- generating a promotion appropriately disguised as free content. It's not Shakespeare, but it's a whole lot better than a banner ad, right?

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Could Redbox Crowdsource Its Way Around Movie Studio Blockades?

from the connecting-with-fans dept

Last week, we wrote about the legal battle Redbox is facing with some of the movie studios. Redbox, of course, rents DVDs at a $1/rental from vending machines that it places all over the place. Some of the studios are upset that (a) they don't get a cut of each rental and (b) that Redbox also sells those DVDs. So they've been trying to force Redbox to sign agreements that would give them a royalty cut and which would put limitations on Redbox -- such as not renting out videos until well after the DVDs are released and also having the company destroy, rather than sell DVDs when they were done renting them. Of course, the labels don't have much of a legal claim here. Redbox has every right to buy DVDs and to then rent them (right of first sale and all that). But, what at least some of the studios have done is to demand that DVD wholesalers not sell to Redbox, which certainly seems like a typical restraint of trade situation. In at least one case, a studio has also told downstream retailers, like Walmart and Best Buy not to sell to Redbox either.

Now, you might think that Redbox could just send employees into those stores without saying where they're from, but those stores probably don't carry enough stock for Redbox to buy enough DVDs efficiently. But what if they did something different? In the comments to that post last week, our rather insightful community started suggesting ways that Redbox could get around the sales blocks from studios by crowdsourcing the acquisition of movies.

There were a few different suggestions on how this could work, but the basic idea, presented by commenter "McBeese" laid out the basics:

• Consumers open online accounts with Redbox. The account contains a Paypal id for deposits.
• Redbox publishes how many copies of each DVD that they want.
• Joe Consumer buys the movie, watches it, and then logs in to the Redbox site and 'pledges' the DVD. Each pledge automatically reduces the amount of a particular DVD that redbox is seeking.
• Joe consumer mails in the DVD with an associated pledge number. When the DVD is received, the agreed amount is deposited into Joe Consumer's account.

A little slower than buying in bulk, but unstoppable.

I'd argue that rather than paying the user for it, Redbox could just credit their account for a certain number of free rentals. Then, not only does Redbox get these movies, but it builds up an even more loyal userbase... with really no significant way for the studios to block this out. There are some things that are tricky about this -- including verifying that the purchased DVDs are what they say they are, and coming up with a way to accurately handle the inventory management, but it is creative, and it shows that as much as the studios want to think they can control this market, there's always going to be some way around their restrictions.

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The Myth Of Crowdsourcing... Or Misunderstanding Crowdsourcing?

from the it's-the-latter dept

A bunch of folks have sent in this silly opinion piece at Forbes, claiming that crowdsourcing is a myth. The reasoning? Because there are individuals in the crowd. Except... um... did anyone say anything different? Of course there are individuals, and the point of crowdsourcing isn't that everyone in the crowd is equal, but that they each get to contribute their own special talents, and something better comes out of it. Every example that the guy dismisses as not crowdsourcing -- Wikipedia, the Netflix prize, open source developing, etc. -- actually does involve crowdsourcing. The problem is that this guy defines crowdsourcing in his own way -- that if any individual contributes a greater amount, there's no more crowd. Say what? The fact that a few determined individuals help craft a specific Wikipedia page, doesn't take away from the fact that it's the overall crowd that made Wikipedia so useful. It's many of those determined individuals together who made the entire Wikipedia so useful. He then goes on to mock the Netflix prize... even though it disproves his entire thesis:

The Netflix contest is a prime example of individual virtuosity at work. One team was clearly in the lead and then a consortium of teams that had worse performance joined together and combined their innovations to create an algorithm that won the contest. For most of the contest, individuals toiled to figure out a solution. At the end, a consortium was formed. None of the invention happened through a crowd.

The problem -- yet again -- is that this guy (a consultant) seems to again be confused about the difference between invention and innovation. Yes, some individuals came up with different ideas. But what made the Netflix prize so interesting was that they weren't able to really achieve the necessary breakthrough until they collaborated. That's what pushed them over the edge. That's what added that real value to take it to the necessary next step. A crowd is always made up of individuals. That different individuals contribute different parts doesn't change the value of crowdsourcing at all.

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Michael Robertson Wants To Crowdsource Proof Of EMI's Lies: You Lie EMI Bookmarklet Available

from the have-fun-with-it dept

EMI has been involved in a lawsuit with MP3Tunes for a while now. The whole lawsuit seems weird, since MP3Tunes is about creating a storage locker for the songs you already have. But one of the points that MP3Tunes made in response to EMI's claims is that EMI was lying in saying that it has never authorized MP3s to be available online. Yet, MP3Tunes had found plenty of promotional tracks that EMI had clearly put online, and it was wondering why others were allowed to link to them, but EMI claimed it was infringement for MP3Tunes to point to those same songs. In presenting this point in court, MP3Tunes has been looking for more evidence of authorized EMI mp3s, and Michael Robertson has announced the "You Lie EMI" bookmarklet (found via Hypebot), that lets anyone help MP3Tunes find more authorized EMI mp3s. Basically, as you surf around, if you come across authorized songs that are available, you can click the bookmarklet, and it checks to see if the artists is an EMI artist, and then lets you submit the details. Whatever happens with the lawsuit itself, it's cool to see someone crowdsourcing data for their defense.

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Facebook Wants To Own Idea Of Crowdsourced Translations

from the some-prior-art? dept

Apparently Facebook is trying to patent the idea of crowdsourced translations of its service. The actual patent application was filed in December of 2008, but the real priority date (I believe) is December of 2007 (when I think the company filed a provisional patent).

This one caught my attention for a few reasons -- with a major one being that way back in March of 2006, some friends of mine were working on a startup called Gabbly, which did online chat, and they had amazing success with crowdsourcing translations. Now, the Facebook patent is a little more advanced, because beyond just asking people to translate, it includes a voting mechanism. But, still, the evolution of crowdsourced translations shows the total silliness of even trying to throw patents in the middle. Almost immediately after Gabbly started doing crowdsourced translations, another online chat provider, Meebo, did the same. Gabbly used a forum. Meebo tried a wiki. Others picked up on the idea and did slightly different variations, and everyone kept innovating, and no one felt the need to own the concept of crowdsourced translations or to prohibit others from doing it.

But now, suddenly, there needs to be a patent on the concept?

I'm confused how anyone could think this meets the criteria of "promoting the progress." After all, plenty of others had figured out how to do crowdsourced translations earlier, and each one improved on the process a bit as they went. It's pretty obvious that including little voting mechanisms is an obvious next step (they were already popular on sites like Digg). So what benefit does the patent provider here other than to slow down innovation? It's difficult to believe that this "innovation" would not have occurred but for the patent system -- or even that it would have taken longer to happen but for the patent system.

Hopefully, the USPTO quickly dumps this, but just the fact that Facebook and its lawyers felt this was worth patenting shows you something about the ridiculous state of the patent system today.

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Once Again, Established Businesses Get Angry At 'Free' Competition

from the welcome-to-the-world dept

It's no secret that established businesses or organizations get upset when they see any form of "free" competition -- even when it's utilizing a new or different business model or social model. We've seen it with taxi cabs and with online mapping services among other things. And, now it's apparently happening with a fun contest that the city of Portland decided to run. Josh alerts us to the fact that Portland decided to try to crowdsource the redesign of the city's website. This sounds like a good idea, but the city's professional designers apparently are freaking out. Of course, this ignores a few key points: first, the city still intends to hire a professional to implement the design, and most of these firms wouldn't have received the business anyway. Besides, what better way to get the actual implementation business than submitting a design idea themselves? The real problem is that these design pros think they have a monopoly on design. There's no doubt that, being professionals, they're likely going to be better at it, but that doesn't mean they get to stop others from jumping in and submitting design ideas. Rather than fighting against the tide, they ought to learn how to surf.

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WashingtonWatch Needs Help Crowdsourcing Earmarks

from the collect-and-win dept

Earmarks -- the pork barrel spending our elected officials dump into various bills to fund friendly projects for constituents -- got plenty of attention during last year's Presidential campaign, but since the campaign is over, it seems that many have forgotten about them. The House and Senate did recently update rules, requiring members to reveal earmark requests, but they've done so in different ways and different formats, and there's no central repository. WashingtonWatch is trying to change that. The site, which has long been a useful source of information on various bills is trying to crowdsource a centralized earmark dataset, asking folks to enter in the earmark data on their own politicians. They're offering up some prizes (a Kindle, iPod shuffle or a fruitcake -- yes, a fruitcake) to those who enter in the most (accurate) data. If you think the Kindle is evil, fear not, as you can just get the cash value and spend it all on fruitcakes yourself.

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The Guardian Embraces Crowdsourcing The News In Useful Ways

from the supply-the-data... dept

Some old school newspaper folks bristle at the whole concept of "participatory journalism" but that's generally because they don't understand it, and think it just means that reporters will be out of a job and a bunch of amateurs will pretend they're reporters. But that's not what real participatory journalism is about. The Guardian recently gave a really good example. Following the recent controversy over expense claims from UK elected officials, the paper put all the data online and let people dig through it to see what they could find -- and they found a lot of interesting stuff that a group of reporters, by themselves almost certainly never would have had the time or skill to dig out (some of it included statistical analysis of the data). But, then, of course the "professionals" were able to take those interesting nuggets and do additional reporting. This is a perfect example of why some folks have been pushing for years to get newspapers to open up their data sources for the community to make use of. Hopefully the Guardian's success with this project will inspire others -- but I fear most "old school" newspaper folks will continue to sneer at the suggestion.

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Town Outsources Video Camera Surveillance To Resident Volunteers?

from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept

Talk about a bad idea in action. We've seen plenty of stories about the growing "surveillance" society that we live in these days -- with cc cameras showing up pretty much everywhere in large cities. But who watches the cameras? Well, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, apparently the answer is anyone who volunteers to do so. First, the city decided to install a ton of cameras -- more than either San Francisco or Boston, despite a massive difference in size. Then, recognizing how difficult it is to monitor everything, the city turned over the managing of the cameras to a private entity who is employing an army of volunteers to not just watch, but control the cameras, and having them "report" any suspicious activities. The article notes that studies have shown such cameras may be limited in their effectiveness (there's no evidence of a decrease in violent crime from them, but some evidence of a decrease in "property" crime).

Still what's really bizarre is allowing unpaid volunteers to man the cameras -- with even the officials from the city admitting that training for the camera operators has been "informal," but that they try to "weed out voyeurs and anyone who might use the tapes for blackmail or other illegal activity." Well, phew. Doesn't that make you feel more comfortable? And then there's this lovely quote from a local business owner who likes the program: "There's nothing wrong with instilling fear." Er... actually, there are lots of things wrong with it...

This actually reminds me a bit of Jay Walker's (of Priceline fame) old idea of allowing individuals at home to monitor secure locations via video streams to their desktop. The idea there was quite a bit different though. It wasn't to watch over people wandering around a downtown area, but to put the cameras on secure areas where no one should ever be -- and the idea was that multiple people would all have the same boring screens up at the same time, and if suddenly someone did show up, hopefully people would notice it and hit the "someone's there" button, to alert security. That idea didn't go very far, but at least it was limited to areas where there weren't any privacy issues. The Lancaster plan, on the other hand, is just scary.

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Company Reinvents BountyQuest In Attempt To Bust Bogus Patents

from the if-it-works... dept

Many of you probably remember BountyQuest, the company set up by Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos as an attempt to bust bogus patents by reaching out to the "wisdom of the crowd" to dig up prior art. The initiative got plenty of attention, thanks to Bezos' and O'Reilly's involvement, but the project faded out and eventually just shut down after it failed in its high profile attempt to invalidate Bezos' own infamous "one-click patent" (which has since run into troubles on prior art found by others).

Apparently, though, there's a new startup that's attempting to do pretty much the same thing. The Associated Press has an article about Article One Partners, whose business plan sounds like a photocopy of BountyQuest's original plan. Apparently the AP reporters weren't aware of BountyQuest, because it's not mentioned in the article. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but considering the striking similarities between the two operations, you'd think it would at least merit a mention. Hopefully Article One can survive where BountyQuest flopped, but I'm not that hopeful, honestly. It could potentially work for a few high profile patents, but on average, it's tough to get random people to get excited about digging up prior art on patents.

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Saudis Crowdsourcing Internet Censorship

from the let-them-do-the-work dept

A couple months ago we covered the Chinese government's effort to create a crowdsourced version of their Internet censorship operation. Now, BusinessWeek is reporting on a variation of this trend in Saudi Arabia. As you probably know, Saudi Arabia maintains an extensive Internet censorship effort, but, in contrast to the Chinese model which involves tens of thousands of workers, the Saudis only employs 25 people. Instead, roughly 1,200 requests are sent in by Saudi citizens, about half of which are subsequently blocked by the authorities. Further, the article says that "only" forty percent of citizens say they are concerned about the censorship. However, one wonders why the censorship requests are even necessary -- in cyberspace, it is exceedingly easy to avoid content one doesn't want to see. If these users find certain websites offensive, personal blocking mechanisms could easily blacklist them, without disturbing the nearly half of Saudis who are nervous about the censorship efforts.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Newest Industry To Be Crowdsourced? Internet Censorship

from the is-there-anything-that-can't-be-crowdsourced? dept

Wikipedia crowdsourced Britannica. Threadless did the same with graphic T-shirts. Amazon's Mechanical Turk helped crowdsource the search for Steve Fosset. Now, the Chinese Internet censors are using the process to aid in their control of information online. Since 2007, when President Hu Jintao called for the state to "study the art of online guidance and actively use new technologies to increase the strength of positive propaganda," China's Culture Ministry has regularly held training sessions for the so-called "50 Cent Party." These Chinese netizens get their name from the reported 50 Chinese cents that they are paid for each post supporting state policy that they make in popular forums and online portals. Rebecca MacKinnon, a noted Chinese Internet scholar and co-founder of Global Voices Online, says "it's clear that there's a lot more than censorship going on: in addition to censorship there's information management, message management, and "astroturfing.""

Although the propaganda posts seem to have been effective in the past, notably stirring up anger against CNN for its coverage of the March 2008 protests in Tibet, the fact that the government must pay these citizens suggests that the desired message is not supported as deeply as the opposition. After all, cyber-dissidents are not being paid to voice their opinions which place them in danger of legal troubles. Further, as has happened in the United States when "astroturf" campaigns are uncovered, will the knowledge that pro-government web content is potentially paid make it less compelling to the average reader?

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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No, Getting Users To Translate Facebook Into Other Languages Isn't Exploitation

from the you-are-getting-compensated dept

A few people have sent in the recent story about how Facebook has relied on volunteer users to translate the site into other languages. That story has resulted in something of a debate from users who feel that this is somehow exploiting these translators, since they're working for "free" for a company that is supposedly valued at $15 billion (despite revenues of about $150 million). This is the same old bogus Nicholas Carr argument that this is somehow exploitation because the users aren't getting paid in cash for their labor. That, of course, is missing the point. No one is being forced or compelled to do these translations. They're doing it because they are getting compensated in their own way. It's either recognition from the community, or merely the fact that doing this enables them to use Facebook more effectively -- and that's compensation enough. For the users who do the translation, it's obviously a fair trade, otherwise, why would they take part?

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Scott Adams To Try Crowdsourcing Dilbert's Jokes?

from the can't-wait-to-see-dogbert's-take dept

While I've had my own minor run in with Dilbert-creator Scott Adams, I remain a fan of the strip. Adams has always received many of his ideas for the strip from readers, incorporating them into the storylines and jokes. Now, it looks like he's taking that idea even further: letting his fans write the comics themselves. Late last week, the Dilbert.com website got a massive makeover, which upset many folks, in particular for its wide use of flash. It also broke the "unofficial" RSS feed that someone had created for Dilbert comic strips -- though the Dilbert people (finally!) realized it wasn't such a bad idea to offer one of their own. While the new site may be a bit flash-heavy and annoying to manage, it's quite interesting to see that one of the features on the site will be to allow fans of the strip to write their own punchline, filling in the text for the final frame. Eventually, this will extend to filling in the text of the whole cartoon. While there are no official plans to publish any of the results, Adams seems curious to see what pops out. He even admits the realities of copyright when it comes to these cartoons (which is amusing, since the argument we had was over copyright), telling News.com:

"We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups."

Even though there is something of a filter in place, it's likely that (as with other such efforts) some of the results will push the boundaries of tastelessness. Still, once you get past that, it will be worth seeing how much this impacts Adams' work. The suggested punchlines could influence future strips, or Adams may eventually do something interesting with those alternative panels. Of course, the whole thing could fail miserably, but it'll still be fun to watch the experiment in action.

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Of Course Crowdsourcing Will Get Stale If You Think Of It As Just A Marketing Gimmick

from the relationships-relationships-relationships dept

News.com's Tim Leberecht wonders if crowdsourcing has "jumped the shark," pointing out that everybody and his dog seems to have a crowdsourcing program in place, and wonders if consumers are getting tired of the gimmick. I think the problem here is the way the question is being framed. If a company views crowdsourcing as just a one-off opportunity to get some free labor out of its customers, then obviously customers are going to get tired of it. But that's the wrong way to look at it. What crowdsourcing is about, ultimately, is improving communications with your customers, and among the customers themselves. Asking your customers to become more involved in various aspects of your business -- offering product advice to one another, providing feedback on new products, or offering ideas about advertising strategies -- increases customer loyalty by demonstrating that your company is actually engaged with its customers and responsive to their concerns. If your "crowdsourcing program" is limited to the marketing department, you're throwing away much of the potential value of the concept. Building strong relationships with customers and fostering online discussion about your products is at least as valuable as any cheesy ads a "make your own ad" contest might produce. Advertising gimmicks "jump the shark," but strong relationships with customers never do.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Crowdsourcing Law Enforcement

from the first-10-callers-to-identify-this-fugitive... dept

In a move that seems calculated to evoke the film adaptation of 1984, the FBI has announced a plan to begin using some 150 Clear Channel digital billboards in major American cities to show national security alerts, information about recent crimes, and photographs of fugitive criminals and missing persons, all with real-time updates.

A pilot billboard in Philadelphia has already helped to capture several wanted criminals, and a spokesman for the outdoor advertising industry suggests that these kinds of publicity tactics can be as useful at demoralizing criminals as they are at generating tips:

"What law enforcement tells us is it contributes to an environment where the criminal feels they have no where to go. A lot of times they end up just giving up."

In a way, the surprising thing is that law enforcement officials hadn't previously taken such visible steps to make use of the distributed eyes and ears of ordinary citizens. The problem, of course, is that publicity can also generate lots of time-consuming false leads. An advertisement currently ubiquitous on New York subways applauds the thousands of New Yorkers who phoned in reports of suspicious packages in the past year. But since we haven't heard reports of thousands of bombs recovered on the A train, it seems safe to surmise that the noise-to-signal ratio on such tips is quite high. As for national security alerts, our experience with color-coded national security warnings, and the attendant spectacle of panicked citizens mobbing Home Depot for plastic sheeting and duct tape, suggest that the Bureau might be well advised to exercise a bit of circumspection about those real-time updates.

Julian Sanchez is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Julian Sanchez and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Google Embracing Unintentional Crowdsourcing

from the sneaky-bastards dept

I'm always fascinated by businesses that are built around incentives to multiple parties, where all those incentives align even if not everyone participating is aware of it. One of the best in the business at coming up with such things is Luis von Ahn, who has done research for many years on creating systems online that get other people to do some kind of "work" for you. After the CAPTCHA concept, probably von Ahn's most famous concept is the ESP Game, which is a game that helps to get much more detailed info about what's in any image by having multiple play a game to name what's in an image. People get more points if they match up keywords faster, encouraging them to be as accurate as possible in defining the key characteristics in an image.

Last year, von Ahn went and gave a talk at Google, after which he licensed the concept of the ESP Game to Google (though, Google's version was too boring to get very much attention). However, it appears that the folks at Google did pick up a few additional lessons in how this concept works. Paul Kedrosky points us to the news that Google is admitting its GOOG-411 project has little to do with taking on the 411 telephone information service, and everything to do with building a better speech recognition system. You see, to build speech recognition, you need many different voices saying many different phonemes (the sounds that make up words) in a variety of accents/tones/pitches/etc. Rather than go out and ask people to speak, Google gets plenty of phonemes just by providing this service.

Cynics may call this exploitation or sharecropping, but it's nothing of the sort. It's giving something of value to get something of value -- even if not everyone is fully aware of what the exchange really is about. Too many people seem to think the idea of "crowdsourcing" is really just about getting the crowd to do work for you -- but that's not it at all. It's about setting up incentives so that everyone involved gets value in some form or another, making it a beneficial transaction to everyone.

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GPS Maker Hopes To Harness The Power Of The Community

from the g-p-us dept

The GPS navigation unit market is one that's largely commoditized, with little apparent differentiation to many consumers among products. It's also a highly competitive market, particularly for makers of standalone systems, who must compete against car manufacturers' built-in offerings, and now also against mobile-phone based systems. But TomTom, the world's biggest vendor of standalone GPS units, is hoping to set itself apart from its rivals by harnessing the power of its community of users. It's made a bid for Tele Atlas, a digital mapmaker, and once it owns the company and its maps, it will be able to incorporate all sorts of user-generated information into its maps and navigation units. Users will be able to notify the company of changes to roads and conditions, or to update information on points of interest, such as restaurants that have opened or closed. This sort of "crowdsourcing" has gotten a lot attention over the past few years, though many implementations of it leave a lot to be desired. But TomTom's idea could be a pretty good one. Not only does it help the company improve its products and differentiate from its rivals at a relatively low cost, users also derive a tangible benefit from participation in the way of updated and more accurate maps and info, so they have some incentive to participate.

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