Abstracto

Towards an Understanding of the Crowdsourcing Activities

Stuart Madnick, Sunny Cheung,Changsu Kim,Yongju Lee

The explosive growth of the Internet has led to a more connected world, and as a consequence, crowdsourcing has become an efficient and inexpensive option worldwide. Crowdsourcing is an increasingly popular trend in which firms solicit assistance from the public for their activities that are typically performed by employees or contractors. This study proposes a crowdsourcing classification model and applies it to various crowdsourcing cases by examining the motivation and implications of some popular websites exemplifying crowdsourcing-based activities ranging from content ideas (the process of generating new ideas) to content services (providing customers with ongoing services). Other activities include designing, generating, subcontracting, and reviewing content and evaluating content solutions. Finally, the study proposes a taxonomy of crowdsourcing activities that has important theoretical and practical implications. This study offers interesting avenues for future research and provides insightful guidelines for crowdsourcing practitioners.