In the past couple of years, the term crowdsourcing has been thrown around quite a bit. Crowdsourcing, which was coined by Jeff Howe in 2006 Wired magazine article, refers to the act of taking an everyday task and outsourcing it to the masses in the form of an open call, hence crowd-sourcing. The idea here is that the voice and actions of many is ultimately better, or more efficient, than that of one person or company.
Recently, there have been several very public demonstrations of crowdsourcing within the corporate world. Powerhouses such as Kraft, Sony, Starbucks, Pepsi, and MasterCard have all utilized the public voice to drive their marketing campaigns. Even Apple recently purchased a consumer-generated advertisement from a college student (you may recall the “Music is my Boyfriend” iPhone commercial). The reality of today’s situation is this – traditional marketing outlets (i.e. Television, print, billboards) are becoming less effective on the generation that truly matters – Generation Y. Gen Y is a tech savvy, Web 2.0, real-time answers needed group of individuals. They command their voices to be heard and lately many companies have been listening. So, as the number of crowdsourced tasks continue to increase, it will be very interesting to see how the voices of the corporations will echo the voices of the masses. More to come later…
-Paul B.
