This is a real bummer. The social enterprise, Akoha, is shuttering. I received this email a few days ago… saying that their revenue model wasn’t working and they are pulling the plug after 3 years. I bought my cards on their first day of operations… but apparently that didn’t help this noble effort to game-ify doing good in real-life. Nice job team Akoha. We’ll miss you.
We’re always on the lookout for new entrants in the Challenge Platform space – as Sparked is, at its core, a challenge platform (microvolunteering being only one type of application that can be built on top of a challenge platform). I’ve just come across a new product, in beta, called Evly – which is toted as a white-label challenge platform.
The idea is:
1) you’ve got a challenge or series of challenges
2) set it up on Evly (as a single challenge or branded website)
3) distribute to your social networks
Here are some screenshots:
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Still fairly rough around the edges – and I’m not sure how the business model works. But it’s interesting/exciting to see the further definition of a niche within crowdsourcing – the niche being that of the challenge network or platform.
Similar companies are:
http://challengepost.com
http://www.spigit.com/
http://www.skild.com/
Crowdsourcing. It’s what we do here at Sparked.
And every now and then, we’re reminded of the mind-boggling power of crowdsourcing.
Here’s a video that will take your breath away. Over 2,000 people recorded videos from 50 countries and Eric Whitacre put it all together. The next time you’re volunteering on Sparked, you might want to play this in the background.
WOW.
I can’t believe how many nonprofits are signing up for Sparked.com each day!
What does 20 nonprofits a day look like? Here’s a screenshot from my email:
Just came across this great list of crowdsourcing platforms and tools.
http://www.openinnovators.net/list-open-innovation-crowdsourcing-examples/
Amazing to think that the word was coined just in 2006. This field is growing fast.
"The space shuttle Atlantis was 600 pounds too heavy.
In space flights, even the slightest pounds make a difference. The NASA engineers had to get rid of exactly 600 pounds or the mission would fail. The engineers could not figure out where to trim this weight. They had planned every last detail down to its maximum efficiency. These highly trained, world-class engineers mulled over the problem for weeks.
Finally someone suggested that they get every single NASA employee in one room and present the problem. Every employee from the night janitors to the mechanics to the secretaries to the astronauts were called into one big assembly with the engineers in the front on stage. They explained the problem.
The crowd sat, thinking.
Then one lone voice from the very back of the room called out: “Don’t paint it!”
The voice came from the mechanic whose job it was to paint the fuel tanks white. The mechanic did the simple math for the engineers. It takes a number of cans of white paint to cover the tanks, and the weight of paint in those cans probably added up to around 600 pounds.
Someone else did more detailed math.
The paint weighed, you guessed it, exactly 600 pounds. From then on, the NASA engineers chose function over beauty, and the rusty tanks successfully launched the Atlantis."
(reposted from: http://www.purplecar.net/2009/01/5-free-crowdsourcing-and-web-20-tools-for-small-business/)
[UPDATE JULY 29: from the comments below, it appears that this story is urban legend! Sorry that it's not true, but it's a good demonstration of how crowdsourcing can work *if* an organization is set up to filter ideas from all corners. The company Innocentive is built on this model and is able to find innovative solutions as a result.]
Great review and critique of crowdsourced labor. Scariest possibility: Turkers used to identify Iranian protesters – without knowing that that’s what they’re doing.
Also a good discussion about union organizing and crowdsourcing over at dolores labs: http://blog.doloreslabs.com/2009/12/not-quite-live-blog-jonathan-zittrain-on-minds-for-sale/
Facebook has been talking about issuing its own currency for a while – they've already got a credits system. This move could significantly change the dynamics of online currencies and virtual goods – and could provide a solid entree for so-called "conscious currencies," where credits for your volunteer work could be traded in for real or virtual goods. Of course, some question turning philanthropic deeds into currency – but the success of social games indicates (to me), that there's great potential here to weave doing-good into having fun and connecting to friends.
Great writeup on Facebook's virtual currency moves here:
This is pretty interesting – YouTube makes a foray into helping *news organizations* crowdsource news. Steve Grove says:
that YouTube Direct would allow “news organizations to control their experience with users while tapping into the community where that activity is taking place, which is YouTube.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/business/media/17youtube.html?_r=2
Crowdsourcing really is becoming the business model of the future.
Very interesting writeup by Paul Lamb on the idea that there could be an alternate currency in "goodness." Help your neighbor across the street, earn a couple of chits good for a soda at the local bodega.
"In traditional economics, the nonfinancial contributions we make are basically worthless. Financial transactions and our monetary net worth are all that really matter. Sadly, we have sunk to measuring our individual and national value through debt, surpluses, and productivity gains."
