“Business by the people, for the people and of the people”

Recently I noticed an interesting ad on one of the Indian news website “if you have a simple green initiative become our green citizen journalist”.Straight, simple, easy and relatively low priced technique to get to the NEWS. Linux an open source operating system has developed through online community. Programmers from all over the world could download the OS and than work on it to enhance it and upload it later for others to work on it. This is how Linux has evolved since its inception. Google uses crowd information to create maps in India.



“Outsourcing” – remember? Sending labor intensive and technical work to low cost Asian countries. Extension to this is “CROWDSOURCING” –age of crowd. It’s a new era of social networking where companies, organizations that use IT for their business are using free, low paid amateurs to code, design, give idea and even come up with solutions to their corporate problems. When I see it I think this is very much related to Conversational Marketing. Getting people involved, getting them to talk and share and put forth their point of view and than making intelligent decisions. Technology is making companies to take advantage of this networked world. A Dutch site RedesignMe is using Crowd sourcing to refine its products. It makes me believe that this phenomenon is breaking the barriers of price and letting every one from amateurs to experts to professional, from every nook and corner of the world to have a market of their own. It’s a great place for beginners. A great way to make billions of mind to work together, crossing the boundaries, towards a single goal. A great innovative idea from a mind to create CREATORS out of CONSUMERS.

This also brings up the question that will ever CROWDSOURCING over shadow Outsourcing? May be- it depends. Every one has millions of innovative ideas that keep boiling up, but soon vanish. Who knows one of these ideas from one of those minds can create billion and billion of bucks for a company who is ready to listen and encourage. What needs attention here is that go and no-go decisions are ultimately made by professionals in the field and not amateurs. Won’t CROWDSOURCING make labor still cheaper and take away jobs and so on…. Well I don’t think so? What about Wikipedia and blogs? Aren’t they also source of information be it technical or non-technical? You can still get information, code, and technical information for free from these sources that are maintained by hobbyist and individuals who do not really care about MONEY factor and most of all. So is it a going to be a next big thing in networked world? I believe it will stay given the fact that it’s a new model of work and is growing and most of all it’s a medium for individuals who need source to explore, experiment, create and innovate new things.