I think mdgreaney is correct, "Crowdsourcing" is not a new version or variation of open source, but a co-opted (or soon to be) business buzzword to refer to getting anonymous buy-in and pseudo-collaboration. Ironic, maybe, that I first heard the term from a Marketplace reporter.
If crowdsourcing is the new vision of what most successful social network sites are doing, I want none of it. The "promise" of social networking (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn), supposedly a new century update of the very real communities that arose on CompuServe [edit] and The Well, has turned out to be just a new form of marketing. Ads and scams abound. Marketers cheer that social networks provide an avenue for companies to address consumers on a personal level, but I suspect all it will do is create a new impersonal advertising billboard slapped over a medium that used to be somewhat intimate.
Crowdsourcing seems to be on the same wavelength. If crowdsourcing needs a big, homogenous group of consumers/contributors, it may not accommodate eccentrics, mavens, seers, grumps, and other individual types that are needed in any real open collaboration environment. It's messy to collaborate with the eccentrics, but by golly a better result comes from that "loyal opposition." When a cabal "crowdsources" for input, that minimum level of control probably filters out the outspoken members -- after all, you're looking for a "crowd," not a congregation of individuals.
Authored Comments
I think mdgreaney is correct, "Crowdsourcing" is not a new version or variation of open source, but a co-opted (or soon to be) business buzzword to refer to getting anonymous buy-in and pseudo-collaboration. Ironic, maybe, that I first heard the term from a Marketplace reporter.
If crowdsourcing is the new vision of what most successful social network sites are doing, I want none of it. The "promise" of social networking (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn), supposedly a new century update of the very real communities that arose on CompuServe [edit] and The Well, has turned out to be just a new form of marketing. Ads and scams abound. Marketers cheer that social networks provide an avenue for companies to address consumers on a personal level, but I suspect all it will do is create a new impersonal advertising billboard slapped over a medium that used to be somewhat intimate.
Crowdsourcing seems to be on the same wavelength. If crowdsourcing needs a big, homogenous group of consumers/contributors, it may not accommodate eccentrics, mavens, seers, grumps, and other individual types that are needed in any real open collaboration environment. It's messy to collaborate with the eccentrics, but by golly a better result comes from that "loyal opposition." When a cabal "crowdsources" for input, that minimum level of control probably filters out the outspoken members -- after all, you're looking for a "crowd," not a congregation of individuals.
You're right, Chris - it may only be semantics.