London Silicon Roundabout October Meetup - Crowd Camp October 6, 2011

With the rise of the Internet and the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, social media and advanced telecommunications, crowdsourcing is all the rage these days and it’s easy to see its advantages. By outsourcing responsibilities and duties to a ‘crowd’ of people, you are benefitting from the talent and experience of the people most equipped to undertake the task in question.

If you’re at all involved in the tech business world, regardless of the size or age of your company, crowdsourcing has a lot to offer you. You can, for example, outsource the development of new technologies or the designing of software to your chosen ‘crowd’, usually an online community in this context.

Not only can crowdsourcing be a more efficient and effective way of getting things done, it’s also a far cheaper and simpler method than those which have gone before it. When you have a problem that needs solving, you simply communicate it to the online community, openly inviting people to submit solutions. Once you start receiving these solutions, your company jointly vets them with the community and you then compensate the community for its help.

To succeed in the Web 2.0 industry or the software market, your business’ best bet is to embrace crowdsourcing for what it is—a fast and cost-effective way of solving today’s problems and developing tomorrow’s technologies.