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Principles of Crowdsourcing: #3 – Keep It Simple

Jeff Howe, Author of Crowdsourcing 00:51

1 Comment

December 29, 2009

Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, continues his series with an explanation of why keeping it short and sweets means keeping your crowd.

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  • JEFFREY GRIFFITH 2 years 4 months and 29 days ago

    JEFFREY GRIFFITH

    There's another reason to keep it simple: crowdsourcing only works well when you have a very clearly defined result. For example, asking the crowd to fix a specific bug (e.g. "Mywebsite crashes when the customer has 12 products in the basket and tries to pay with an American Express card, but works for 11 or 13 products, and always works when paid with other methods. Pleas fix this bug.") will generate far better results than a generic "Fix my broken website" plea. The former allows member of the crowd to fully estimate the time required and to determine the investment they will make or the fee they will charge, where the latter suggests you are looking for an employee to accept a delegated task for little or no reward because you already pay them a salary. The crowd is usually a partner, not an employee.

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