Crowdsourcing For Dummies

Chapter 1

People Power: Getting a Feel for Crowdsourcing

In This Chapter

Understanding the basics of crowdsourcing

Seeing the benefits of crowdsourcing

Joining the crowd as a crowdworker

Following the steps to being a crowdsourcer

You’ve probably heard about crowdsourcing. If you haven’t, you probably won’t be leafing through the pages of this book. However, you may not be aware of the many ways in which you can use crowdsourcing to your advantage or of how crowdsourcing is a powerful way of doing work, organising people, gathering information and raising money.

Many people – the unconverted – think that crowdsourcing is nothing more than putting a question on Facebook and waiting for your friends to answer. Yet it’s much more than that – and much more powerful.

I can think of no better example of the power of crowdsourcing than what it has done to the encyclopaedia. Putting together an encyclopaedia was once a grand scholarly activity to organise the knowledge of a nation. The French created the first in the 18th century. The British followed with Encyclopaedia Britannica in the ...