The wisdom of crowdsourcing

• Josh Mehlman
• 22 May 2009

Have you ever come with a question your colleagues, Google or Wolfram Alpha couldn’t answer? Back in the bad old days, you might go to the library or post a question on an online forum, wait a few days and come back to find a bunch of people telling you how stupid you are and not answering your question.

Getting answers

Social networks have changed this dynamic completely. Social media give us the ability to quickly pose questions and publish responses in text, pictures, links, audio or even video. This phenomenon, called ‘crowdsourcing’ or ‘lazyweb’, has particularly taken off with the growth microblogging services like Twitter.

On an average day, people might pose questions to their Twitter followers about the best tools for counting website page views, keeping ants off a vegetable garden, finding a nearby doctor’s surgery open after hours or choosing a pair of stylish sandals.

Outsourcing tasks and finding freelancers

Many people are also harnessing the power of these networks to outsource small tasks or find temporary or freelance staff.

Online technology has enabled people in many professions to work from home, or just about anywhere else, for clients around the world. Online directories such as Elance allow customers to post jobs online and ask freelance professionals to bid for their work.

Sydney-based Jenni Naylor started the Freelance Factory – an online directory for graphic designers, writers, editors, web developers and other creative professionals – in 2006.

“It started off as a personal thing, me wanting to find someone to do a job,” she says. “There wasn’t a site where I could find someone, so I thought I might as well do it myself.

“I knew so many people who were freelancing and couldn’t find work and many people who had the jobs to do but couldn’t find the people to do them.”

Naylor says most of her customers prefer to work with local freelancers rather than anonymous creatives in Brazil or India.

“Everybody can work virtually, but the thing that really surprised me is that geography plays such a tremendous part,” she says. “They have the first face-to-face meeting and then they’re generally happy to work remotely. I even get people asking if I have anyone in the [Sydney] Northern Beaches.”

Searching for service providers

Serviceseeking.com.au started in October 2007 with a broader focus on tradespeople, freelancers and business services. Customers can put out their jobs to tender and allow service providers to bid for their work.

“eBay has got people used to the idea of a competitive platform for buying products; we created a tender platform where businesses could compete not only on price,” says co-founder Jeremy Levitt.

“End users don’t have to laboriously ring around to all the businesses listed in the Yellow Pages and find out who has the capacity to do the work. Only interested businesses respond to your project posting.”

For service providers, Levitt believes the site provides a strong, measurable return on investment by delivering live job leads.

“It’s one step closer to winning the job,” he says. “It’s not an eyeball or a click; it’s a genuine job lead.”

While the site includes the facility to quote a price up front, Levitt says the cheapest quotes aren't usually the best.

“The winning quote is generally the best combination of price and scope of works,” he says.