Crowdsourcing

There really is nothing new in Web 2.0

May 22, 2008 By Dan Thornton

It’s been said before, but having chatted with some of my readers, and having been unable to quickly find a previous online example, I though it’s worth restating: There’s nothing new in Web 2.0.

And by that, I mean there’s nothing new about the facilities Web 2.0 offers. And now for some examples:

Tagging: Every time you’ve labeled anything in your life, you’ve tagged it. Putting your bills in a folder, putting a sticker on your homemade chutney, or creating a mixtape of songs. If only we’d called it labeling, rather than tagging, I’d have saved myself a few hours of explaining. And a Folksonomy is just what happens when information is structured by people labeling it.

Social networking: Every time you’ve been introduced to someone via a friend, or found yourself chatting to someone you’ve stood next to at a concert, or at the football, you’ve networked socially. Facebook and Myspace are the internet equivalents of your local pub, or the reading group at the local library.

Blogging: Diaries. Fanzines. The family newsletter tucked inside Christmas cards. Newspaper columns.

Crowdsourcing: Happened hundreds of years ago. Sticking up a ‘Wanted’ poster and offering a bounty was crowdsourcing people to catch a criminal.

Social news aggregators (e.g. Digg): Just recording online the same opinions you’d get chatting around the office coffee machine/smoking area.

Word of Mouth, Buzz, Social Media Marketing: When your pipe sprung a leak last night, and you came into work and asked your friend if they knew a good plumber – that’s Word of Mouth. Buzz is just getting lots of people talking and recommending. And social media marketing is just using the new online gathering places.

I did lie earlier.

There is one new thing about all Web 2.0 technology which radically changes everything we know. It’s made it so much easier to do all these things, that the amount of people involved, and the effects, have been amplified 100s, 1000s or even millions of times. It’s always happened. But now it’s happening on a global scale, and in a way that can change the fortunes of businesses.

An amazing piece of crowdsourcing by a newspaper/website

February 24, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Just a short update, due to my need to finish decorating a nursery and cooking the evening meal. But I had to share one of the best examples of crowdsourcing I’ve seen, and by newspaper and website. (I picked this up via Jeff Jarvis)

Documents relating to the assassination of John F Kennedy have been discovered in a vault by the Dallas Country District Attorney, and he’s made them available to the Dallas News. So what did the Dallas News due with the huge amount of documents, which had been compiled by the District Attorney at the time of the assassination, and never made public?

They’ve started making huge chunks of the documents available as PDFs and available for public download. And they’re asking their readers to look through these amazing documents, and let the Dallas News know if they find anything interesting.

In the old days, such a huge amount of documents would probably have ended up with a junior staff member or similar spending weeks looking through them, and despite their best efforts, missing important news.

Now, though, staff and the public can look through. And with a topic like this, you can bet there are plenty of interested academic and amateur experts rushing to read through all this new info, and who are probably better placed to judge if something is new or ground-breaking than a Junior Reporter who might have never covered the subject before.

I’m certainly intrigued enough to download some of the PDFs and have a read when I get five minutes…

The incredible secret of good posts

January 19, 2007 By Dan Thornton

I don’t intend to turn this into a guide to blogging, as there are already plenty of sites that do a great job. I’ll admit to being an avid and fascinated reader of Problogger, and Blogging on Blogging.

But I do think there was one point missing from the recent post of great content at Problogger. The gist of the post is how to write great blog content by enriching and adding to links and articles you find, rather than regurgitating them. Plenty of great ideas in there, from which many online media companies could learn…

But the one suggestion I would add is this: “Before you write about a new social networking site or application….try using the thing.”

Some places do this well. I tend to get a lot of news from downloadsquad.com for this very reason. Every time I read about a new application, I know that someone on their team will have used the thing, and can tell me how easy it is, and how well it performs. That’s why I’ve tended to mention Myspace and LinkedIn a fair bit, because I’ve used them enough to have a reasonable idea of what is possible. Indeed, I’ve somehow fallen into the Top Ten Experts on LinkedIn Answers, which most would say is a flaw in the system!

It’s also why I haven’t mentioned The Venice Project, or the revelation that it has revealed it’s true name of Joost. I am actually registered as a beta (not better!) tester, I have the set-up.exe on my PC, and I’ve actually made a couple of beta test suggestions. But the problem is that I haven’t had the chance to set it up on my home PC, and can’t log in via the company firewall, so I don’t have anything to add to the 100 million other posts on the same subject. (Although some suggest targeting topics like Joost or the I-Phone to boost blog hits…)

It’s also an easy to way to see which sites are capable of holding attention. I keep meaning to log back into Cambrian House, but lost interest. I think it was a combination of things, including the lack of personality inherent in attempting crowdsourcing. I’m still disappointed my three-day free trail of MyBlogLog has reverted to the standard package, but I think I’m sufficiently disappointed to probably pay some cash to upgrade shortly… So you’ll know where to blame if ads start appearing here to fund it… Feedburner also gets daily clicks.

It’s a dilemma whether to blog about something new for the sake of it, or to sign up, test it, and then try to say something more valuable in the long run… so I’d welcome suggestions on what you think is the right balance…