MediaBerkman

Radio Berkman: Crowdsourcing – Fact or Myth?

March 24th, 2009

Crowdsourcing has been touted as a future business model for everything from design, to advertising, to reporting, to data analysis. But is it for real, or just trendy?

Jeff Howe, of Wired Magazine, put a stamp on the phenomenon with his 2006 book Crowdsourcing, and has been gathering evidence for its development as the future of a participatory economy. He sat down with David Weinberger to go into detail.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
More on General Mills “Open Innovation” Model
Cory Doctorow’s “Whuffie” concept is referenced in his freely downloadable book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Video and Audio from Jeff’s recent Berkman Center talk available in the Fishbowl

CC-licensed music this week:
General Fuzz: “Cream” and “Walking Home”

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 114: 2009-03-24_howe

Is crowdsourcing the wave of the future? Or is the hype to adoption ratio higher than techno pundits would like to admit? The answers to these questions and more on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

If passion is the currency of the 21st Century, what you do online – your t-shirt designs on threadless.com, your contributions to Wikipedia, your responses to Yahoo questions – could make you the next Donald Trump.

Crowd-sourcing, the practice of outsourcing certain business functions – creating advertisements, inventing new products, monitoring data, fact checking – to a crowd of motivated amateurs, novices, and professionals through web-based applications – has been hailed as an amazing part of a new participatory economy.

Jeff Howe, the reporter for Wired credited with coining the term “Crowdsourcing” in his 2006 book called “Crowdsourcing” – says that the phenomenon is more than a trend.

Evidence is beginning to point to a widespread adoption of crowdsourcing – powered by the net – as a core function in business – a basis for a bottom-line, often with little or no added cost to the business. He sat down with David Weinberger to give him the scoop.

[LEAD IN TO – INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

You can follow Jeff at his blog at crowdsourcing.typepad.com. A detailed talk from Jeff Howe, along with links to references made on this episode, can also be found on our website at blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata

General Mills Open Innovation model: http://www.finance-commerce.com/article.cfm/2009/03/10/General-Mills-Best-Buy-among-companies-using-crowdsourcing-sites-to-foster-innovation

The Woofie – Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom: http://craphound.com/down/download.php

Jeff’s blog: http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/

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Entry Filed under: radioberkman