Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing involves seeking services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from the population at large rather than from traditional employees. It involves channeling several experts’ desire to work on a project and then freely sharing the output with others. These collaborations can take place in both online and offline environments.

The term was initially coined by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson of Wired Magazine in 2005 after noticing how businesses were using the Internet to engage individuals outside their companies to complete several assignments. In many ways, the process involved outsourcing to the crowd, which led to the creation of the portmanteau crowdsourcing. Participants are motivated by intrinsic motivations, such as the feeling of being a part of a team, altruism, and intellectual stimulation, and by ...