If you’re a member of the marketing world or feel fairly familiar with social media, you’ve probably heard of the term, ‘crowdsourcing’.
Wikipedia says:
Crowdsourcing is a newly coined term for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, usually leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies.
Many businesses are taking advantage of this method to help drive creative ideas and content. One of the most recognized uses of crowdsourcing in the business realm is from clothing company Threadless, which sells shirts on their website that have been designed and rated by the public.
So What About Plurksourcing?
We all know that its possible to crowdsource an idea or a project, but finding the right audience to work with can sometimes be difficult. For your next project, you might try starting with Plurk. (Get it? Crowdsourcing to Plurk?)
The community of users that has developed on Plurk is one that is excitable and willing to participate. Also, the threaded method of viewing conversations makes it easy for you to track ideas and thoughts generated by the group.
But Will it Work?
AmberCadabra, an active Plurker and organizer for Plurkshops, recently Plurksourced the creation of a tagline for Plurkshops to her friends and followers.
Amber’s Plurk garnered 63 responses (at the time I wrote this entry). All she had to do was ask the question and then let the power of the Plurk community go to work. Out of all of the responses, she gathered some great ideas and was able to come up with a good solution.
Getting Started
The success of your Plurksourcing efforts may hinge on the size of your follower list, so if you don’t have a lot of friends on Plurk, try looking up someone who does and see if they will Plurk the question/project for you.
If you need help, I would be happy to help anyone looking to Plurksource an idea or project.
To stay in touch, follow Plurkular or Mike Templeton on Plurk.
July 3, 2008 at 8:14 am
I love it. I’ve talked about how social sites like plurk can act as a human-powered search engine, but I’ve never fully considered that they can be your own magic brainstorming machine. What a great thought!
July 3, 2008 at 9:22 am
That’s a very awesome idea, Mike
When I first saw the headline, I’d thought you were saying to open source your programming through plurk, haha. Which, you know, is not too shabby an idea… hmm.. time for another post of yours?
Great content here, man!
July 3, 2008 at 10:27 am
I love the idea Mike. I’ve asked simple questions on Plurk and gotten some really good answers so logic dictates that it would probably work.
Keep up the good work dude. Love the site
July 3, 2008 at 10:35 am
Thanks for putting this out there Mike! We do this all the time when we need help finding a solution to a problem, need an idea for our own business - like a business name or re-branding and how to deal with clients. The power of the group and all their talents is amazing indeed.