Amateur Economy of Crowdsourcing

One of the tenants of crowdsourcing is the ability of many amateurs to assemble and create something of value. Google is most likely the largest crowdsourcing endeavor in the world, with millions of web page owners working together to create value. Google’s winning search technology is a radical departure from other Internet search engines. Google interprets links on web pages as votes. The more links that point to a page, the more likely it is, that page contains what you are searching for. Google also analyzes pages and ranks them by ‘importance’, links from important pages carry more weight than unimportant pages . For example, let’s say you need to find the definition for an obscure word “sesquipedalian.” Typing sesquipedalian into Google we see that in .05 seconds a list of 18,300 pages containing our tongue -twister appears. The first page in the list http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sesquipedalia has only two pages that link to it, a Columbia University page and another page from www.freedictionary.com. Even with only one external linked page, Google was able to deliver an accurate definition for sesquipedalian in the first result. Using Google’s methodology, the Columbia page linking to the definition is ‘important’ and pushes our accurate definition for sesquipedalian - (a very long word (a foot and a half long)), to the top of the results. When thousands of pages, controlled by universities and armatures alike, are combined and weighted, Google proves crowdsourcing can be very effective.

Armatures can be a powerful force; throughout history they have stepped in and redefined or created entire industry categories.

This example speaks to the heart of why crowdsourcing is such an effective problem solving mechanism: Consider the following real word examples and the tremendous social and financial benefits that arose from them:

• The Airplane, invented by two bicycle mechanics
• Personal computer, invented by a physician
• Cotton Gin, invented by a teacher
• Kodachrome film, invented by two musicians