Crowdsourcing

The term "crowdsourcing" was something completely new to me. After reading the Brabham article, I was really intrigued. The idea of having the websites users actually be the main source of problem solving and be a part of the site is brilliant. They get thousands of different point of views and opinions to help their company out. If only we could do that in real life. It's like employees thousands of workers to help out without having them on a pay roll. I'm sure some of the crowd sourcers want something out of it, but getting the satisfaction of helping a company succeed should be a bit of an incentive.

I checked out the popular threadless.com to see what it was all about. Immediatly I was overwhelmed at the amount of apparell they sold. After narrowing my search to women, size small, I looked through pages and pages of shirts designed not by the site's creaters, but by people like me, customers. I got so many ideas from all the shirts I saw, I wanted to create my own. Unfortunatly, I didn't have the correct adobe program, and didn't really have time to download it, so I scrapped that idea. But, the idea of the website is genuis! Winning t-shirt designers can win upwords of $2000. That is alot of money for one design! Having the option of "I'd buy it"gives the customers the chance to vote on what shirts they like the best, and gives new designers an idea of what shirts are in and what kind are not.

More and more sites are using the idea of crowdsourcing that I go to. Even sites life facebook and myspace gives you the option of making your own applications and having other users download it to their pages. It give the sense that everyone is putting in their share to the site they belong to. People get motivated when they feel they have added to something big like all of these popular websites. It gives a feeling of authority and power as well.

As far as crowdsourcing relating to interpersonal relations, I think it helps in many ways. Not only are users contributing their own thoughts and idea, they are working with these companies to produce these ideas. Of course it is all online, but it can lead to big things. The site creaters could like the customers idea so much, that they want to meet inperson to discuss an actual career with the company. Or, it can get people together by creating different teams to help the certian website. It is really easy to get to wrapped up in technology that people forget how to deal with others. Allowing users to help and contribute sites makes working together and communicating more easy. Although it is online, working for a purpose seems alright to communicate virtually.

All in all, I believe the internet is severely hurting our societys ability to communicate and keep relationships face to face. The internet is convienent and anonymous in a way the users don't have to be exactly who they really are. As in the reading says, "Everybody knows something", everybody contributes and thus works together. Crowdsourcing could be the answer to online interpersonal relationships where it doesn't actually hurt face to face relationships. The more people work together and communicate, the easier it is.