You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘crowdsourcing’ tag.
Facts – present and future
There are different names out there: sharing economy, peer-to-peer value exchange – and “people-powered markets”. The last title is from Vanessa Miemis, who has done a great job to collect and sort 60 (!) of that markets (emergentbydesign.com). There are some more facts from her research:
- There are over 2.8 million couchsurfers in 80,317 cities across 246 countries
http://www.couchsurfing.org/ - Over 820 coworking places are active worldwide
http://www.deskmag.com/en/820-coworking-spaces-worldwide-statistics - Car sharing will be a 6 billion annual business by 2016
http://www.cleanfleetreport.com/clean-fleet-articles/zipcar-ipo-car-share/
Source: emergentbydesign.com
Beyond ideology
You might ask: People Economy – is that communism reloaded? Definitly not! Just in the opposite direction. Yes, it has to do with re-wiring the value chains, but to give people more power. It is about empowerment. The leftist ideologies often did show that they have no real trust in people. When they have acquired power they have again and again build massive control structures – to keep themselves in power and keep people powerless. They even did hate freedom of speech, freedom of thought. The new “people economy” is quite the opposite: It accepts your economical empowerment, conceives you as an entrepreneur, encourages you to monetize on your ressources.
Airbnb story as an example
“Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world online or from an iPhone device.” (techcrunch.com) The company is funded with 108 million USD. The competitor wimdu.com has got 90 million USD. (techcrunch.com). And if you check the growing directory of Lisa Gansky you will find dozens of platforms in the travel category alone ( http://meshing.it/categories/29-Travel ). By the way the directory has 32 categories.
It is the unfolding socio-digital “matrix” again
Why is this happening now? In the US context there might be an influence of the ongoing economical crisis, but the primary driver is the maturity of the “socio-technological complex”, the matrix of highly inter-connected people – technologically supported with digital mechanisms of trust and reputation, with the habit to connect and interact. We will see this spread and gaining momentum in the coming years. While this trend is about sharing some posessions or skills there is another disruptive trend in close company: microwork crowdsourcing in the real world. Curious? Check out Gigwalk, the “first ever distributed workforce”: “We turn the world’s iPhones into your instant mobile workforce.” In the moment available only in US .
What is Gigwalk? from GigwalkTV on Vimeo.
STOA Report "Looking Forward in the ICT & Media Industries"
Today “Web 2.0″ is just mainstream and seems more or less boring as a subject of research. The prevailing question is how to realize practical and efficient Web 2.0 solutions, what to do and not to do with social networks, social media – as a user and in the business perspective. As a typical example see a lengthy blog post like this from Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 blog – this is what a lot of people care about: 50 Essential Strategies For Creating A Successful Web 2.0 Product
But there is still the demand for critical assessment of the dynamics, the effects and side effects of the transformation (revolution, yep) of ICT and the media industry. Even politicians have come to understand the issue, lately when they realized the role of Web 2.0 in becoming the 44th president of the USA (BTW I have been blogging in last July: “Maybe Obama can win with swarm mobilisation effects in the internet – and is the first “user generated president” of the USA.”)
In the last year I had been asked to contribute some statement in the STOA report “Looking Forward in the ICT & Media Industries”. The acronym STOA means Science and Technology Options Assessment (for the European Parliament) and you are educated enough to enjoy the allusion to the ancient philosophy school.
Critical assessment of Web 2.0 and the user’s social capital
Don’t get me wrong – my attitude concerning Web 2.0 is rather affirmative (see my record) . But as with most technological innovations there are some downsides. To know them is just a necessity if you want to secure the acceptance and value of a technology in the long run. After the “BeaconGate” there was a second “Facebook scandal” (the terms of service thing) some Read the rest of this entry »
superstructgame.net: superthreats 2019
Some weeks ago the wellknown “Institute for the Future” (IFTF) started an experiment with the crowdsourcing of future scenarios and solution finding. I was too busy with projects and customers to analyze all these ideas, let alone to write a review. Simple question: Does it work? I do not know. It depends on the initial purpose. In terms of quantity it was a success. User generated future in numbers:
- # 7,061 players
- # 536 superstructures (i.e. concepts to save the world)
- # year 2053 = new survival horizon; thanks to the creative ideas of the players the survival horizon of mankind is now set to 2053 (I will send you the formula, if I found it)
Obviously this is a serious game. But is it more than a game? Can anyone, politicians, CEOs, plain citizens seriously base future decisions on cumulated non-experts opinion? This is an
SIGNAL: Forbes.com has integrated with Digg, the collaborative news community. Forbes’ Digg channel www.forbes.com/digg/mostrecent/ lists the most dugg stories and videos.
CONTEXT: media, social web, crowdsourcing
RELEVANCE: Coexistence strategy of mass media (1.0) with the power of the web (2.0). Growing trust in the quality of the web crowds output.
CHALLENGE: This integration changes the game for diggers too. Some like to be appreciated by the ‘old media’ of the online world, but maybe some would prefer some revenue share for the integration of their crowdsourcing work.
