Groogle Pushes Toward Quantity Instead of Quality

In his blog post, "New Approaches Put the 'Crowd' in Crowdsourcing," Rob Salkowitz (author of Young World Rising: How Youth, Technology and Entrepreneurship Are Transforming the Global Economy) discusses the challenges involved in effective crowd sourcing and later gives examples of initiatives that have overcome them.

“How important is sustained participation versus early participation?" asks Salkowitz.  "How much of the reputation system should be transparent in the form of badges, levels, and expert ratings? What’s the optimum number for a well functioning community versus the power of scale? These are important questions. The race is on to find the answers.”

But these are really a form of Groogle questions, because most these questions have already been resolved, and they ignore a much more pressing consideration, such as: "How do you measure the quality of the work?"   

In other words, the measure off success in a crowd sourcing model is (a) speed of response, (b) quality of response, and (c) quantity (that is, number of fresh perspectives).  If you achieve these three, you achieve "collective intelligence" -- a much more useful application of Internet communities than pure crowd feedback. 

Is Groogle Making DesignCrowd Think the "Winner Takes All" Problem of CrowdSourcing Hasn't Been Addressed Until Recently?

Alec Lynch, CEO of DesignCrowd, says DesignCrowd’s new model is part of a broader evolution in crowdsourcing that he describes as ‘Crowdsourcing 2.0′.  


“Crowdsourcing doesn’t have to be winner takes all.  We offer crowdsourcing where everyone can get paid.  This refinement of crowdsourcing is part of a broader progression in crowdsourcing where crowdsourcing companies are introducing tighter governance and control of the crowd to ensure consistent, quality results and a sustainable and fairer model.”


In truth, this fairer model has been operating on at least one collective intelligence site since 2001.  A distribution formula was developed as early as 1999 and patented in 2001.  Why didn't CrowdDesign address this issue before they launched?  Were they unaware that it would be an issue?


See the DesignCrowd article here.

A Business Times Article Makes Grooglesque Assumptions

 An excerpt from an article by the Business Times: Web Startups Tap into Brainpower.

Their strategies vary, but the basic premise is the same: The search technology that has made Google so successful fails to access untold quantities of unpublished information typically residing in people’s heads — information that could be used for selling advertising or even sold for a fee.

The article then goes on to name the start-ups, the usual Silicon-valley based suspects, with Quora apparently having a valuation of $85-90 million even before launching.

Perhaps what’s most interesting is that (a) social search, (b) dependable information and (c) ‘answers to complicated questions quickly’ are all mentioned in the same breath; the assumption being that if you have a dense social graph, you can get any information as soon as you need it simply because your network will have individuals with the required expertise; and that these people will be happy to respond to your query. 

There is also the assumption that, as a way to generate revenue, a layer of advertising can be wrapped over the exchange of information amongst social peers.

Over the last several years, we've worked hard to dissect and test such assumptions. Our findings indicate that the availability of experts does not necessarily mean the availability of their expertise for your needs. Every piece of expertise is valuable and needs to be valued. 

Also, advertising is not the only revenue model, or even the most inevitable revenue model in such "brainpower" systems.  Knowledge itself is valuable, which is why we've focused on methods to evaluate the knowledge in a fair, consistent manner and develop a revenue model out of the speed and degree to which the knowledge solves a problem or answers a question.