Crowd Sourcing Questions

What is Jeff Howe's Definition of Crowd Sourcing?
Crowd sourcing is the act of company taking a function one performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined network of people, this can lead to a job being performed collaboratively although often usually undertaken by sole individuals.

What does the video believe is the key to successful crowd-sourcing?
Jeff Howe explains within this video that the key to crowd sourcing is the communities in which it is being done. He explains that the communities are the building blocks of crowd sourcing and also shows that crowds can now self manage themselves to create lots of content.

Why do "crowds" form on the internet? Are you part of an online crowd- if so which?
Acording to Jeff Howe, the main reason that Crowds form on the internet is due to one thing, A Shared interest. It all starts with a shared interest in what can just about be anything, be this football or heavy metal. These communities can then get together and talk about the interest that they have in common be it either by IM messages or Forums.

What are the crucial terms in Jeff Howes idea of crowd-sourcing? why is this crucial?
The Crucial Terms in Jeff Howe's Crowdsourcing video are Open Call and Undefined. This in simple terms means that even the person you think may be the best person for the job may not actually be the best person for the job.

Name two reasons why this type of Crowd Sourcing is now possible?
Crowd sourcing is now available due to many reasons. The first being the internet being more and more accessed by everybody, this leads to more and more people being able to contribute to other communities that they have a shared interest in. Another reason that Crowd Sourcing is now possible is that the technology is now cheaper and also more availble to everybody, the exmaple that he gave within the video was photography. This is because the digital SLR cameras are very easy to get a hold of and now amateur photographers can contribute to communities such as the stock photo communities.
How Effective do you believe it to be?
I believe that the idea of crowd sourcing is very good, but there are some faults within it. First of all the idea of getting information and other materials such as photos and videos from crowd sourcing is very good as it will usually give a large amount of informaiton and due to the wisdom of crowd effect the information is usually of a good quality. But there are always people out there that will use this to deface the information, looking at wikipedia you can see people changing the information just for fun.
What do you think is the motivation behind this?
The main montivation for the crowd sourcing effect is that idea of people creating communities due to a shared interest. This drives people forward to get the information together in a large quantity and also drives them to get the best quality information for the shared interest?

Name three advantages and disadvantages of a Crowd Sourcing?
Advantages:
1) In a business sense crowd sourcing can be used to gather information and get jobs done quicker and usually for a cheaper price.
2) Crowd sourcing can be used to get amateurs into a market that may be dominted by one larger company. (Think about Walter The Whale)
3) Crowd sourcing can be used as a great marketing tool within the market.

Disadvantages:
1) Crowd sourcing may bring the wrong information which will then be useless for the task that it was originally intended.
2) Crowd sourcing may be used against you, looking at the LG Design crowd sourcing which a company like nokia could then look at and then use for thier phone
3) Lastly crowd sourcing may result in bad publicity if not done correctly harming the image of the company that is conducting it.

Crowd Sourcing Case Study
The most recent example of a good crowd sourcing campaign that I can find is the Ford Focus advertisment campaign. Ford has created the first ever fully spectator filmed commerical, this was done by spectators filming two drivers racing Ford Focuses through narrow streets in Key West. Not only that but Ford flew eight of the most active users from the Ford Facebook page out to experience the commercial shooting and also take part within this. This is a very good example of crowd sourcing as it shows just what can be done using the power of crowd sourcing to its fullest, it also shows that the biggest companies know how to use crowd sourcing to their advantage to create the best form of advertising that they can.