Has crowdsourcing become a lazy cliché?

By Molly Flatt

Crowdsourcing is one of those concepts which inspires intense emotions, from idealism-fuelled evangelism through to sneering cynicism. Often trumpeted as one of the triumphs of World 2.0, a utopia of democratic crowd wisdom that foregrounds the creativity of the little guy, it has captured the imagination of brands and organisations big time, from the sublime to the banal.

via jcbehm @ Flickr

There are multiple case studies just from the past few week. Google’s launch of the Nexus One. Implemenation of Iwantoneofthose.com’s payment system. Ushahid’s Swift River project using the public to keep information channels open in an emergency or in non-democratic countries. The redesign of the website for the City of Austin, Texas. Setting the price of the new Duo electric car from Meyers Motors.

However, an equally vocal faction consider crowdsourcing to be an ineffective and unrigorous way of innovating, which has become a cheap and easy shortcut for lazy brands.

As John Klossner recently put it (in a post claiming that Mr Smith Goes to Washington is the first example of crowdsourcing on film –  nice – I always think of Spartacus):

Crowdsourcing can be considered a way of doing a project cheaply. Instead of bringing in experts to look at the problem, you let “the crowd” solve it. For someone with professional expertise who makes a living at this, where is the attraction? Crowdsourcing might allow for the discovery of an unthought-of idea — kind of like winning the lottery — but how do you guarantee that the most qualified individuals will participate? Is it crowdsourcing? Or a pie bake-off?

Or in the glorious words of professional curmudgeon Charlie Brooker:

TV advertising used to work like this: you sat on your sofa while creatives were paid to throw a bucket of shit in your face. Today you’re expected to sit on the bucket, fill it with your own shit, and tip it over your head while filming yourself on your mobile. Then you upload the video to the creatives. You do the work; they still get paid.

In Forbes.com, Dan Woods recently wrote a well constructed piece, based on Netflix’s recent algorithm crowdsourcing project, warning that the word itself is misleading. He posits that it is still the exceptional individuals in the herd which drive the real innovation and discovery.

So surely brands need to be crowdsurfing rather than crowdsourcing – not getting bogged down in the lowest common denominator but finding ways to help the really exciting stuff to rise to the top?

This reminds me of Francesco D’Orazio‘s presentation for WOM UK back  in November, when he described Face’s approach to research. They combine a wide initial crowdsourcing approach with a more focused co-creation stage that gathers a select few opinion leaders to test the best ideas and nail down specific proposals for activity – meaning you get both individual and group thinking, bottom and top down structures. It makes sense.

There are plenty of crowdsourcing communities which promote quality as well as quantity and ensure members are rewarded in a way consummate with their expertise – check out Blur Designs or Bush Green. But it’s also true that ‘crowdsourcing’ is rapidly becoming a media buzzword applied with dubious strategy or integrity. It will be interesting to see whether ‘the crowd’ become more reluctant to share their insights and graft, and how creative brands become in filtering those opinions and making them an effective part of their feedback loop in a way that engages, but doesn’t exploit, the public.

What do you think? Have been part of a crowdsourcing project and how did you feel? How do you think the practice will evolve and who is doing it best, and worst, right now?

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Brought into the world on Friday, December 18th, 2009 and filed under 1000thoughts, Global, Stats & Research.

  • http://look4jih.blogspot.com/ JIH

    My thoughts:

    Crowdsourcing is a great way to get a brand’s community involved. It’s fun and makes the community connect even deeper with it’s brand. BUT – I think it’s most relevantly used as a strategic platform to certain kinds of projects.

    Pepsi’s “Refresh Everything Project” is a great example of utilizing crowdsourcing.

    I think crowdsourcing & Pepsi’s latest marketing efforts are a match made in heaven,
    because (and I don’t know the inside scoop on how the project initially grew into fruition)

    Experts came up with the creative thought: Refresh Everything.

    Crowdsourcing was thrown into the mix – then things grew from there.

  • http://www.crowdmanage.com @crowdmanage

    Yep, it certainly is a media buzzword applied with dubious strategy or integrity. To a lot of people it has come to mean nothing more than a logo competition. I don’t think it matters too much though as the mass collaboration that it describes will continue unabated as platforms evolve to leverage its impact.

  • http://shkspr.mobi/blog/ Terence Eden

    Crowd Sourcin is just market research writ large and done in public. Take “Britain’s Got The Strictly Big Brother Factor” you have a set up (by the creatives) which relies on the public telling them who they like the best so they can go and buy their albums / work out DVDs.

    Why risk developing something that might fail when you can have the public pay to give you their feedback?

    In terms of the Netflix competition, is it really so different from tendering a bid for any sort of work? Except it’s slightly more public. You might ask for the best structure of bridge and have teams of engineers provide youo with free estimate – while getting to see the the other bids.

    I’m not against crowd sourcing – but it strikes me that it places all the cost and risk on to those participating – not those setting the agenda. Whether that’s a good thing or not, depends on which side of the equation you’re sitting.

  • http://www.thehotiron.com/ Mike Maddaloni – @thehotiron

    I have not participated in a pure crowdsourcing project, but I do recognize it as a way of getting information and feedback from the community. It is right up there with measuring the traffic to your Web site and having focus groups and surveying. It should be considered a tool in your toolbox, and you can choose one or more depending on the task at hand.

    Would I use it as the sole way to meet the goal of a project? It depends on the project. I would not recommend it to a client as the sole way to get, for example, a design for their Web site. That process is very intimate and in some cases personal, and it is a volley between them and myself as the consultant to come to meet their objectives as well the needs of their perspective users and clients. And our team as consultants has years of experience where we can offer the best fit for clients.

    Also, let’s face it – nothing is purely free! Even if you get the feedback from the crowd, someone has to aggregate, filter, etc., and that takes time and/or money. Just like it costs someone to administer a Linux server.

    mp/m

  • http://www.insideview.ie Bernie Goldbach

    Molly Flatt’s last four paragraphs ring true for me. It’s really difficult to launch a truly creative brand if your crowdsource because it’s so much like committee work. But crowdsurfing is certainly a better approach.

  • http://twitter.com/jon_bedford Jonathan Waddingham

    I agree with Molly in that tapping into the wisdom of the crowds hasn’t quite reached the dazzling heights many had predicted. Whilst sites like get satisfaction and user voice have given a nice way to collect and respond to feedback from people, they appear sometimes to be a lazy way of trying to have customer service or idea requests covered.

    Witness the growing ubiquity of “feedback” tabs on many web 2.0 sites, that when clicked are empty realms devoid of customer engagement, interaction or conversation. I think JIH is right above, it’s a means to and end, not an end in itself – the community you serve needs to be cultivated in the right way to get the best feedback, so a well informed ‘crowd’ sourced from your most important customers is better than just asking everyone and hoping for the best.

  • Molly Flatt

    Glad to see it wasn’t just a bout of Friday skepticism on my part…

    Terence, I agree that there are some very old practices here dressed up in new media speak. Like Bernie says, committe by another name? However I do think the technology has changed not just the scale/openness but also people’s perception of the potential power and impact of their ideas and opinions – we’re viewing our own voices in a different way.

    Mike – ah yes. Context is all. Horses for courses. And cost-wise I think it’s important for companies not just to get away with what they think they can, but truly consider how they can give some appropriate value back.

    Jonathan – you’re so right. The disappointing graveyards of Web 2.0 ambition litter the web. It isn’t enough to just add a conversational capability and ‘wait for the magic to happen’… people have better things to do with their time.

  • http://niffnaffntriv.com KerryMG

    I think crowdsourcing has always been a lazy cliche and I agree wholeheartedly that it is individuals within the crowd that drive it. Weirdly I’ve been talking a lot about community to our (Porter Novelli) clients this month and for most it seems that the rule of 1:10:100 of creator, interacter, lurker holds true. That is of course for using crowdsourcing for content creation. When it comes to using the crowd to listen I am more in favour, though the question is how do you make sure that you are listening to the right people?

  • Peter Hay

    It’s fine to watch and monitor what the crowd are saying and some useful information can come out of this for brands. However, you get what you put in. To create dialogue rather than monologue is vital.

    A brand needs to listen and continue to ask questions but ensure they pinpoint the relevant audience to get the best from the community they are targeting.

  • http://mattsingley.com/blog Matt Singley

    I’ve been involved with a lot of crowdsourcing projects, some good some bad. I think if the crowd is left to its own devices, it’s true that it could become more of a pie baking contest rather than a focused (and fruitful) effort. In my opinion, a good community leader can guide the crowd…allowing them their autonomy but still infusing some focus. Crowdsourcing without focus is called “chaos” and usually doesn’t end up being very helpful.

  • http://www.domesticsluttery.com Siany

    Of course, there are lazy ways of crowdsourcing, but that doesn’t mean that it’s all cliched. As with any research, it shouldn’t be the only source. But a considered one? Certainly.

    Sure, you can’t gauge that you’re getting the best opinions. But that’s not why you crowdsource. I think a committee is a very different thing. Crowdsourcing gives you angles you’d never have considered otherwise. It’s more about thinking in different ways. It’s your job to trust that you’re listening to the right voices within that crowd.

    There are lazy and hackneyed ideas in all media, and crowdsourcing might be becoming a buzzword. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its merits. I just think people are relying on it too much. It shouldn’t provide answers, it should ask questions.

  • http://www.facegroup.co.uk Francesco D’Orazio

    Hi Molly, thanks for this post.
    I think the main problem of crowdsourcing is the word crowdsourcing itself, which suggests the idea of outsourcing tasks to the masses.

    But when done properly, crowdsourcing is not at all about outsourcing to the masses, it’s about collective intelligence, it’s about supporting and harnessing the thinking of a collective mind, it’s about opening up processes that until now have been driven by very small groups of people whose decisions/creativity/choices and understanding of reality have been affecting the lives of millions of people (insights, NPD, or advertising big ideas). And with the real-time social web the opportunities in this area are now growing exponentially, from a quantitative and qualitative point of view.

    However, I think we should bear in mind that crowdsourcing is a mean to an end, not as an end in itself. It’s got to be part of a bigger process rather than a standalone methodology. It shouldn’t just be about involving “the people” (as opposed to “the experts”) but about having experts/creatives/designers to sit at the same table as the people, inputing to the same process, in different ways and from various angles.

    And as you (and Charlie Brooker) rightly pointed out, it’s a thin line between empowerment and exploitation, but it’s quite easy to stay on the right side.

    I’ve put together more thoughts on this hybrid model here http://www.facegroup.co.uk/an-hybrid-model-for-open-innovation

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen Ms. Jen

    Hi Molly,

    I have gotten to the point that any of the words that were hatched out of web 2.0 and grabbed by marketers to be echo’d ad infinitum ad nauseum to be fodder for Buzzword Bingo rather than to be taken seriously. Your questioning is good.

    But if we parse the idea behind the buzzword, many of us can agree that the concept can be accurate and culturally relevant right now, until the point it gets thrown into the echo chamber (or circle jerk, depending on your mood).

    There have been times when I ‘crowdsource’ or access the lazy web, when after much research I want to know what my social and professional circle think about the idea, so I will throw it out on Twitter with a link to see what folks think. This can be effective or useless depending on the time of day, the part of the crowd I am attempting to source, and/or folks’ desire to answer. This can be fruitful or a complete dud.

    We can examine the next circle up, with beta testing. Various software companies will ask frequent users and community members to alpha or beta test a future version of a software. From the company’s perspective this particular version of crowdsourcing can be very useful, as it takes current power users and people who are very involved in the current software to participate in critiquing the upcoming version. This can be very effective. It can also help the company in future hiring as they can see which members of their community are creatively contributing. SixApart (TypePad, Vox, Moveable Type, etc) has sourced new employees through beta testing and their community, and former employees now contribute frequently in the community. This is a great way for crowdsourcing to turn into a viable community that is adjacent to and working with the company.

    But… but… at what point does crownsourcing veer away from a sharing with friends and colleagues or contributing with community members and just become another marketing grab that is just as skanky and scary as any bad overpaid advert campaign? This line is very fine.

    The City of Austin has crossed the line. What manager approved $375,000 crowdsourced marketing research campaign to determine what the City’s new website should be? Whoever approved this was doing a wee too many drugs on a side alley off of 6th Street where one frequently sees cast off needles in the gutter. Really. Ok, bad Austin jokes aside, this is a very internet connect city with a highly web literate population, such a crowdsourcing campaign verges on the ridiculous.

    What we get down to here, is what you, Molly, blog about frequently, which is the difference between building community for your clients via WOM and the web versus just another slick-ish gross-esque buzzword bingo in the name of billable hours.

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen Ms. Jen

    p.s. Sorry for the typos.

    p.p.s. My fave buzzword bingo, excellent to play with friends at conferences: http://bingo.adactio.com/

  • Dreamgirl

    A considerable gathering of literally several people has been the result of this interesting discussion. Parse, context, old practices dressed up in burlesque – this is almost what they used to call in the 1960s a “happening”.

  • Molly Flatt

    As so many of these comments have reminded me, the wisdom (and/or folly) of crowdsourcing is really at the heart of the social approach. So when you start questioning it you start questioning everything… and as most sentiments seem to agree, it’s all about context, application and to be honest common sense.

    Ms Jen -

    “at what point does crownsourcing veer away from a sharing with friends and colleagues or contributing with community members and just become another marketing grab that is just as skanky and scary as any bad overpaid advert campaign?”

    That should be on a poster on a wall in the office of every ‘social’ brand.