CrowdEngineering Blog Arena | Published News

Forrester Research: US Consumers Are Willing Co-Creators

gio — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 09:08:40 CEST

No excuses for companies (nearly 50%) not using social media to interact directly with their customers yet.
US consumers like to be engaged, 61% of the 3,990 interviewed answered positively to the question if they would be interested in providing input to help design and build new products or improve current products.
63% declares their contribution is dependent upon receiving some form of comp

2 Vote(s)

Crowdsourcing for a new ostracism era?

gio — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:55:13 CEST

Few weeks after the wikileaks case showing how anonymous access to the net can enable crowdsourced publishing of classified documents this article of International Business Times reports the interest of SEC towards crowdsourcing.
SEC is understaffed so what's better to allow everybody to report a suspect company or finance operation? Multiple claims against the same subject would raise the prob

2 Vote(s)

Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch - McKinsey Quarterly - High Tech - Strategy & Analysis

gio — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:10:22 CEST

August edition of McKinsey Quarterly is dedicated to "Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch". Four of them belong to the big Crowdsourcing family:

Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream: the power of the crowds used inside large enterprise for user generated content, collaborative support, text translation and much more.

Making the network the or

2 Vote(s)

Crowdsourcing journalism: natural disaster coverage

gio — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:24:54 CEST
Interesting point of view of a journalist.
During the recent earthquake in Ontario and Quebec several articles on the local and national news papers were written starting from stories posted by thousands of people on social networks.
The definition the journalist gives of crowdsourcing is so "using a large group of people to get the big picture" instead of man-on-the-street interviews.
Also

13 Vote(s)

Crowdsourcing journalism: Vocus acquires Help a Reporter Out (HARO)

gio — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:55:26 CEST
Help A Reporter Out, best known as HARO, has been acquired by Vocus, a NASDAQ floated public relations management company.
HARO community composed by 30,000 reporters and bloggers and more that 100,000 small business and public relations professionals has been very active in the news crowdsourcing.

16 Vote(s)

Wisdom of the crowds in the space: How Shuttle launched first time

gio — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:23:30 CEST
A great anecdotal example of how wisdom of the crowds can help solving small but important parts of complex problems. Shuttle Atlantis was ready to launch but it was overweight, just 600 pounds but engineers were not able to find anything they could sacrifice to get to the right weight.
Every NASA employee involved in the project was asked to take part of a brainstorming session and for the bac

15 Vote(s)

crowdsourced inventory tracking, simply genius

gio — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 05:37:21 CEST
That's really great. Hippo, a snack vending machines chain, reinvented inventory. How would you track that a machine in some location is out of stock? What snack is missing and at what time on which day of the week the sales need a intra-day refill? Well that's is very simple if you work together with your best partner, the customers crowd of course. Hippo gets notice of out of stock vending ma

13 Vote(s)

Wisdom of Patients vs Wisdom of Doctors

gio — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:51:10 CEST
NYT asks a serious question: could we cure diseases faster, or at least better control them, through crowd-sourcing?
PatientsLikeMe provides forums where more than 65,000 members with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and more than a dozen other disorders are encouraged to share details about their conditions and the success or pitfalls of specific drug

18 Vote(s)

Crowdsourcing Wine-Food-Travel Guidebook

gio — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:50:10 CEST
Crowdsourcing applied to travel and tourism: Wineopolis is a new wine-food-travel guidebook series that leverages crowdsourcing to blend the feedback and expertise of its Citizens as featured suggestions in the published guidebook.
Contributors can earn discounts and prices.

15 Vote(s)

Social Marketing at PepsiCola

gio — Tue, 25 May 2010 23:11:44 CEST
At PepsiCo, consumers' social relationships serve as the foundation for their most effective marketing according to Frank Cooper III, Senior Vice President and Chief Consumer Engagement Officer.
A 2009 Wetpaint/Altimeter study found that businesses widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in both revenue and profit amd that 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people the

13 Vote(s)

Product safety commission to use crowdsourcing

gio — Tue, 25 May 2010 11:31:11 CEST
Consumer product safety reforms enacted in 2008 required the commission to establish a publicly available, searchable database on product risks.
A new website, scheduled to be complete by March 2011, will be used by the commission to post product safety information within 10 business days after it informs the manufacturer of an incident in which the item caused harm, according to a proposed rule

14 Vote(s)

Crowdsourcing in editorial: WSJ, how to create a magazine in 48 hours

gio — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:33:47 CEST
48 hours magazine (http://48hrmag.com/) is an experiment, gone very well actually, of Wall Street Journal. Magazines traditionally take weeks to produce but WSJ put out a call for photos and articles with a 24-hour deadline and leaving another 24 hours for editing and laying out the magazine.
5,000 people signed to contribute, magazine's editors were expecting about 500 submissions but ended up

8 Vote(s)

Crowdsourcing in e-government: InformationWeek

gio — Sun, 23 May 2010 13:02:54 CEST
A recent survey by Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project found that
- 82% of Internet users (61% of all American adults) looked for information online or completed a transaction on a government Web site in the year preceding the survey;
- 48% of Internet users have looked for information about a public policy or issue online pertaining to local, state, or federal governme

6 Vote(s)

Social Media for Government according to Craig Newmark

gio — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:44:13 CEST
How Social Media can effect real social and governmental change is an interesting story by Craig Newmark, founder of Craiglist.
In US getting citizens involved in the day by day governmental discussions is becoming very popular.

7 Vote(s)

Crowd generated flavors for Mountain Dew

gio — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:21:11 CEST
Applying crowdsourcing to guess the requirements of next product to launch is not new. Mountain Dew, the Pepsi Co. brand, asked its customers using a social media based crowdsourcing poll, which favor they would have liked for the next drink. What it came out are three new flavor: Distortion, Typhoon and White Out. Let's see if the preference of the crowd will become a product success story.

13 Vote(s)

CrowdEngineering Named Cool Vendor in Social Software and Collaboration by Gartner

gio — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:18:56 CEST
Another important achievement. Gartner's report "Cool Vendors in Social Software and Collaboration" includes CrowdEngineeering between the 5 most innovative, impactful and intriguing companies for 2010 in this area!

11 Vote(s)

Navizon's passive crowdsourcing selected by Microsoft

gio — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:40:32 CET
Navizon is widely using passive crowdsourcing to log new Wi-Fi and cell towers using GPS while users drive. They have a rewards program for contributors. Microsoft licensed Navizon's service to enhance its mobile services.

14 Vote(s)

CrowdEngineering company to watch according to Altimeter's report

gio — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:34:53 CET

Altimeter Report "The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management" includes CrowdEngineering between companies to watch in the Social CRM space. Get it for free at

12 Vote(s)

Hello Music launches declaring itself the opposite of Crowdsourcing

gio — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:21:39 CET
Hellomusic.com was created by Wilshire Media Group, a digital music product design and development firm founded by Zack Zalon and Brendon Cassidy to seek greater awareness for undiscovered artists.
Zack Zalon says the company is the opposite of crowdsourcing because they apply an human element in the screening process of artists propositions.
But who said that introducing quality in a process

12 Vote(s)

Government 2.0: is crowdsourcing the foundation of real e-democracy?

gio — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:12:07 CET
If democracy is people participation to res publica what could be better of crowdsourcing to have citizens constantly involved in key decisions? Several cities are deploying mobile crowdsourced applications, citizens can report crimes, problems, send suggestions wherever they are and in real time. Other cities are crowdosurcing software development involving local developers in building new web a

4 Vote(s)

Facebook Crowdsourcing again to Eradicate Offensive Content

gio — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:01:32 CET
Facebook's Community Council represents another interesting crowdsourcing application launched by the actually biggest and most famous social network. With over 350 million users Facebook has the need to moderate billions of contents to avoid porn, racist or violent posts to be published daily. In an attempt to cut the moderation costs what better idea to involve the crowd in the moderation?

2 Vote(s)

Crowd-drunks against police's controls

gio — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:27:01 CET
Crowds orchestrated can do several things and many of these are useful and ethically right. But what if police's sobriety check points appear in near real time on your map being pointed out by drivers crossing them? Another example of the power of the crowds, hopefully not bringing more accidents avoiding controls while drunk or either twitting police's locations while driving...

2 Vote(s)

AT&T crowdsourcing network quality

gio — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:46:27 CET
AT&T is finally responding to all the criticisms of poor network quality. And is responding in the right way, with an IPhone app customers can use to report network problems like dropped calls, poor coverage or voice quality.

2 Vote(s)

Darpa Network Challenge: the power of the crowd

gio — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:27:42 CET
For the 40th anniversary of the Internet, Darpa launched a contest, 10 weather red balloons were launched in 10 locations of United States. In a perfect crowdsourcing schema the winner would have needed to coordinate several observers all around the continent to submit all the 10 locations for first. The contest was won by a MIT group submitting all the 10 locations in just 9 hours.
As DARPA poi

2 Vote(s)

Wikipedia contributors quitting?

gio — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:44:31 CET
During first quarter 2009 more than 49 thousands editors left Wikipedia. Contribution is decreasing while number of users is constantly increasing. Of course Wikipedia doesn't need anymore so many contributors because many topics already covered do not need writing or editing. But Wikimedia foundation is worrying about boring discussions between contributors related to single posts that can be a

2 Vote(s)

How Twitter and Crowdsourcing Are Reshaping Recruiting

james — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:14:11 CET

Harvard Business features a story about Best Buy's use of crowdsourcing to refine a job description, and to recruit a "Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing".

2 Vote(s)

Fashion Crowdsourcing

gio — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:42:53 CET
A new crowdsourcing site from California. Justproud enables members to contribute to the design, the modeling of clothes and the photographs for fashion campaigns.

2 Vote(s)

Crowdsourcing rocks in Australia too

gio — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:31:40 CET
Nothing really new in this article of the Brisbane Times but a comprehensive overview of the potential of crowdsourcing. Interesting crowdsourcing's definition as "outsourcing on steroids".

2 Vote(s)

Will the wisdom of crowds bring us more pc security?

gio — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:31:58 CET

The article covers the new threats and new ways hackers try to breack computer systems. But it also mentions the new methodology Norton Internet Security applies when it has to decide if an application can be trusted or not. Well it of course taps on the wisdom of crowds, if many people have a good reputation of the software it must be trustable by others as well.

2 Vote(s)

Nasa Crowdsourcing again, with TopCoder this time

gio — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:40:48 CEST
Nasa is tapping on TopCoder's community's wisdom of crowds to develop algorithms which would help NASA's flight surgeons make better decisions on what might be included in the medical supplies kit of future long-term human space missions.

1 Vote(s)

Found in translation!

gio — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:17:32 CEST
Today both Facebook and Google launched initiatives about translate-your-site-with-us-and-the-crowd. A perfect synchrony by these two giants of the modern Web. Facebook made available the application they used to maintain the 65 languages versions of their site. Google is providing an easy access to a Translation Gadget inviting site visitors to provide a translation. Well crowdsourcing for trans

2 Vote(s)

5 Ways Banks Are Using Social Media

gio — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:21:15 CEST
Banks are historically reluctant to innovate but in this case they understood it is a really actual need and not a vision of the future the phenomenon of the social media. In this article 5 ways banks, American all of them, are making they processes actual and integrated with what is happening right next of the cashier's desk.

2 Vote(s)

The Wisdom of the Crowds: a funny video from PBS

gio — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:20:47 CEST
Watch and enjoy. Really funny and well done. This video tells the story of the presumed inventor of The Wisdom of The Crowds!

2 Vote(s)

The Wisdom of the Crowds, an HowTo by Powazek

gio — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:20:14 CEST
Derek Powazek gives a talk titled "Design for the Wisdom Crowds" at sxsw 09.

1 Vote(s)

CBS Launching Crowdosurced Radio Station

gio — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:10:02 CEST
What do you get when you put together a radio like CBS and a social powered music network like Last.fm? Welcome to the first crowdsourced radio channel. Until now the crowdsourcing the radios was simulated with people calling at the phone and asking for favorite songs, few people representing the audience. Now last.fm can count on millions of preferred play lists where to start from to build radi

2 Vote(s)

When the Crowd is not a Crowd

gio — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:25:47 CEST
Professor Vassilis Kostaros from Carnegie Mellon University analyzes the phenomenon of Crowds impersonated by few individuals submitting several opinions/ratings/contributions each. Of course the final result of the study/poll/evaluation is falsified. What's the lesson learned from that? Well Crowds without control of the process could waste your social project and transform your first of the cl

3 Vote(s)

Crowdsourcing 101: Why Vitaminwater Facebook App Can Not Lose

mauricius — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:09:06 CEST

Given several efforts at crowdsourcing creative content, and product development in recent years, more than a few companies seem to think so. What's less clear is why some crowdsourcing efforts are wildly successful while others fall flat.

4 Vote(s)