Back in 2006, Jeff Howe was writing an article for Wired magazine about the birth of online photo stocks when he coined the term "crowdsourcing".
He was describing the phenomenon that meant professional photographers who were selling stock photographs for hundreds or thousands of dollars were competing against amateurs and hobbyists who would sell their images for just a dollar.
This was a new form of media sharing that was to take the internet by storm, now companies and publications can purchase endless amounts of top quality images at dirt cheap prices because some student had a fancy camera, Photoshop and an internet connection.
In essence, crowdsourcing brought information from the masses to the masses.
Howe went on to publish a book on the subject in 2008 and the concept has been implemented in many aspects of business and the web.
Howe defined crowdsourcing as "the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated employee and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people".
By nature, users of the internet are uniformed an opinionated which works for some problems but there are fast becoming more and more places to find like minded individuals on a global scale which is good for the specific problems some people have.
Crowdsourcing, to some degree, is in place in many different parts of the web, from comments on a YouTube video to complaints forums on a broadcasting network site.
But it is currently taking off in a variety of new websites, Waze.
com is an online traffic database which allows users, using GPS enabled smartphones to update on information about traffic.
Users can notify others of an accident, road works or speed trap as well as slow moving traffic, but just by having the app turned on it gives real time GPS data as to the movement of the user, if they move quickly, the traffic is light.
Journalists and publications now turn to the public for their information, often getting tipped off to something newsworthy via mass discussion on Twitter or Facebook.
Many people who own an iPhone have at least one news 'app' which delivers them the latest news stories but also allows them to upload stories, pictures and videos direct to the website.
This means at almost every major event where the public are present, the news stations have a potential input from thousands of amateur reporters.
By utilising this to its maximum potential, they could remove the necessity to dispatch a reporter and gather all their news from a selection of on-scene sources.
Some companies are successfully using crowdsourcing to develop products, similar to the standard focus group method but with access to a much larger audience.
Customer feedback and complaints can be aggregated to steer the course of the advancement of products.
One website, Quirky.
com, has developed a strategy for monetising crowdsourcing.
Users submit an idea for a product, they receive the input of thousands of other users and the product gets developed, the company can then produce the product and sell it through the website while passing most of the profits to the original designer and a proportionate amount to the contributing users.
By doing this they offer a financial incentive to taking part in crowdsourcing, and money always makes things more interesting.
He was describing the phenomenon that meant professional photographers who were selling stock photographs for hundreds or thousands of dollars were competing against amateurs and hobbyists who would sell their images for just a dollar.
This was a new form of media sharing that was to take the internet by storm, now companies and publications can purchase endless amounts of top quality images at dirt cheap prices because some student had a fancy camera, Photoshop and an internet connection.
In essence, crowdsourcing brought information from the masses to the masses.
Howe went on to publish a book on the subject in 2008 and the concept has been implemented in many aspects of business and the web.
Howe defined crowdsourcing as "the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated employee and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people".
By nature, users of the internet are uniformed an opinionated which works for some problems but there are fast becoming more and more places to find like minded individuals on a global scale which is good for the specific problems some people have.
Crowdsourcing, to some degree, is in place in many different parts of the web, from comments on a YouTube video to complaints forums on a broadcasting network site.
But it is currently taking off in a variety of new websites, Waze.
com is an online traffic database which allows users, using GPS enabled smartphones to update on information about traffic.
Users can notify others of an accident, road works or speed trap as well as slow moving traffic, but just by having the app turned on it gives real time GPS data as to the movement of the user, if they move quickly, the traffic is light.
Journalists and publications now turn to the public for their information, often getting tipped off to something newsworthy via mass discussion on Twitter or Facebook.
Many people who own an iPhone have at least one news 'app' which delivers them the latest news stories but also allows them to upload stories, pictures and videos direct to the website.
This means at almost every major event where the public are present, the news stations have a potential input from thousands of amateur reporters.
By utilising this to its maximum potential, they could remove the necessity to dispatch a reporter and gather all their news from a selection of on-scene sources.
Some companies are successfully using crowdsourcing to develop products, similar to the standard focus group method but with access to a much larger audience.
Customer feedback and complaints can be aggregated to steer the course of the advancement of products.
One website, Quirky.
com, has developed a strategy for monetising crowdsourcing.
Users submit an idea for a product, they receive the input of thousands of other users and the product gets developed, the company can then produce the product and sell it through the website while passing most of the profits to the original designer and a proportionate amount to the contributing users.
By doing this they offer a financial incentive to taking part in crowdsourcing, and money always makes things more interesting.