What is crowdsourcing in simple words?

Crowdsourcing is a rapidly growing business in Russia - a tool based on the use of the potential and resources of the crowd. This means that the tasks are performed not by professional workers, but by amateurs - enthusiasts who receive symbolic remuneration for their work or who do not receive at all.

The foreign term crowdsourcing appeared thanks to the famous American writer and journalist Jeff Howe. It was he who invented this new word, formulated and explained the principle of its action. To understand what crowdsourcing is, one should turn to the English dictionary (crowd - “crowd” and sourcing– “use of resources”), literally translated into Russian, this term means “use of crowd resources” for solving social problems. Where volunteers act as performers, and the activity itself is carried out using information technology.

A striking example of crowdsourcing is the project - Yandex.Toloka. Any person (Internet user) can perform these or those tasks, since their implementation does not require special skills, only time and desire are needed. The only restriction is the age of the performers, since most tasks have a mark of 18+. However, Internet users set this framework for themselves.

Types of crowdsourcing

There are several types of crowdsourcing: social (public), political, as well as in business. Grigory Asmolov is considered the person who laid the foundation for social crowdsourcing in Russia. He owns the initiative to create a site "Virtual Market", aimed at helping people who find themselves in emergency situations. This platform receives information from messages, links, photos and video materials posted by users on the Internet. This service is able to bring together people who need help with those who are ready to provide it.

The most successful crowdsourcing project in the public sector was the campaign of choosing the logo of the Olympic Games 2014. The All-Russian competition of mascots of the Games in Sochi started in 2010.

Leading companies and brands are actively using crowdsourcing in the business environment. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have repeatedly launched the largest contests to select the best design and appearance of products. Google, Microsoft, Toyota, Samsung - are ardent supporters of the use of crowdsourcing technologies.