Week 8: Crowdsourcing & crowdfunding
What is Crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing is the process of gathering work, information, or opinions from a large group of people via the Internet, social media, or smartphone apps. Crowdsourcing participants work as paid freelancers in some cases, while others perform small tasks for free. Traffic apps, for example, encourage drivers to report accidents and other road incidents so that app users can get real-time updates (Hargrave 2019).
Two great examples provided by Kearns (2015) are:
1. Waze is one of the most successful crowd-sourced start-ups. It's an app that lets users report traffic jams and gives them automatic directions for the best route to take. Waze gathers data by measuring drivers' speeds to determine traffic jams and asking users to report road closures. It's a fantastic app that demonstrates how a dedicated crowd can sometimes be all a company requires.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TyhmaQt3ZU
2. McDonald's decided to give their customers free rein in 2014, allowing them to submit ideas for new burgers they'd like to see in stores. They could design their ideal burgers online and have the rest of the country vote on which ones were the best. In Germany, creators were also encouraged to launch their own campaigns, which included viral videos and other valuable content marketing, all of which came at no cost to McDonald's. McDonald's released the burgers weekly after the winners were announced, along with a picture and brief bio of the creator.
In an era filled with fake news, what effect can this have on crowdsourced information?
Reviews are also a good example of crowdsourcing and reviews done by the public under companies are an important way for customers to choose a certain company they want their work to be done by. Unfair and negative reviews can have a negative impact on sales. Unfairly positive reviews, on the other hand, are a problem that can lead to buyer's remorse.
Michael and Diana, a retired couple from southwest London, needed a roofer to repair their leaking roof. They used RatedPeople to find a good builder and paid him £2,000 to complete the job. A week later, the roof began to leak again. He refused to come back and finish it properly. A subsequent survey revealed that he had exacerbated the problem. The couple later discovered that the person they had chosen had subcontracted the work to someone else without their knowledge, implying that the reviews they had read did not apply to the person who had visited their home.
According to Giorgos Zervas, an assistant professor of marketing at Boston University, the number of suspicious reviews has been increasing. Mr Zervas stated, "Reviews are becoming a more integral part of consumer decision-making. I believe algorithms can only detect fake reviews to a certain extent." In the end, creating a legitimate-looking fake review isn't difficult, and review fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated." (Gordon 2014).
Crowdfunding - Small money making big changes :
Crowdfunding is the practice of raising small amounts of money from a large number of people to fund a project or venture. Similar concepts can also be implemented through mail-order subscriptions, benefit events, and other methods. Crowdfunding is a type of alternative finance and crowdsourcing.
Examples of successful crowdfunding are :
Since 2009, Kickstarter has been a rewards-based donation platform that has assisted businesses in raising funds. More than $5 billion has been raised for more than 182,000 projects thanks to it. The ease of use of Kickstarter is one of the reasons for its success. You choose a monetary goal and a time frame for achieving it, then tell the story of your campaign (Business News Daily Staff 2021).
The Pebble E-Paper Watch is famous for being Kickstarter's breakout success, raising $10,266,845 in 37 days. Backers of the Pebble watch, one of the first affordable smartwatches on the market, jumped at the chance to be among the first to own one. Pebble started shipping smartwatches 10 months after their Kickstarter campaign ended (Business News Daily Staff 2021).
In Conclusion:
Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are amazing ways for things to move forward. Such as crowdsourcing provides information from a large number of people which helps to analyze information but the same way fake crowdsourced news will cause problems of the same level. Crowdfunding is a great way for small companies to get funds and get the push they need to start, but misuse of crowdfunding is also present which might cause trust issues among people to further help in the future.
References :
Hargrave,M (2019), Crowdsourcing, Investopedia, viewed 1 May 2021 <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdsourcing.asp>.
Kearns,K (2015), 9 Great Examples Of Crowding In The Age Of Empowered Consumers, TYB, viewed 2 May 2021 <https://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/9-great-examples-crowdsourcing-age-empowered-consumers>.
Johnson,S (2021), What Is Crowdfunding?, Business News Daily, viewed 1 May 20121 <https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4134-what-is-crowdfunding.html>.
Schroter.W (2014), Top 10 Business Crowding Campaigns Of All Time, Forbes, viewed 2 2021 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/wilschroter/2014/04/16/top-10-business-crowdfunding-campaigns-of-all-time/?sh=7932c65f3e9f>.
Gordon.O (2014), Keeping Crowdsourcing Honest: Can We Trust The Reviewa? , BBC, viewed 2 May 2021 <https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26182642>.