Crowdsourcing & Social NetworksShrenik Sadalgi

Spring 2010COMS E6125 Web-enHanced Information Management

Columbia University

Introduction

“Crowdsourcing is a neologistic compound of Crowd and Outsourcing for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an "open call" to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions”

-Wikipedia

Examples of Crowdsourcing

Examples of Crowdsourcing

Examples of Crowdsourcing

Problem OwnerMe

ProblemWriting the paper

TasksCreating content for a section of the paper

ParticipantsFriends / Random People

Solution Writing a sub-section of the paper

Incentive Authorship

Crowdsourcing my WHIM paper / presentation content

Architectures of CrowdsourcingOne Problem Multiple Participants Multiple Tasks Multiple Participants

Web 2.0 and the Rise of Crowdsourcing

http://whitehallplc.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/screen-capture-1.jpg

Web 2.0 and the Rise of Crowdsourcing

Architectures of Participation

Web 2.0 and the Rise of Crowdsourcing

User Generated Content

AJAX and the emergence of Web Services

Web 2.0 and the Rise of Crowdsourcing

Acting independently, but collectively

Web 2.0 and the Rise of Crowdsourcing

• Acts as a destination hub for individuals to establish relationships with co-workers and by doing so, enable them to jointly build, or expand, their professional and social networks

• Includes different tools for people to interact with each other, contribute information to the site, participate in different site activities, and build a sense of community in an informal and voluntary manner

Crowdsourcing & Social Networks

Crowdsourcing Social Networks

• Acts as a destination hub for individuals seeking to either add value or earn some money

• A tool for solving the problem and collecting the solution from the participants if the problem is solvable online in a short period of time (in the order of minutes)

• Need not have any tools for participants to interact with each other and collaborate

iOu

Crowdsourcing over Social Networks

Problem Owner – Borrower (User)

Problem – Financing $100

Tasks – Financing $1

Participants – Friends and Friends of Friends of Borrower (User)

Solution – Lending $1 to the Borrower

Incentive – None for small amounts (feel good factor) / Payback with or without Interest /

Services / Return of favor someday

Problem Owner – Answer Seeker (User)

Problem – Question

Participants – 1st, 2nd ,3rd Nth degree of contacts of the answer seeker (User)

Solution – Answer to question

Incentive – Return of favor someday (someone will answer a question asked by an answer

provider)

Ask

iOu

API Support

• Retrieve the social graph of a user (List of first degree contacts (friends), second degree contacts (friends of friends), Nth degree contacts)• friends.get - Returns the identifiers for

the current user's Facebook friends

• Send and receive messages between users• None – Only communication through

wall posts, comments & events

• Retrieve the social graph of a user (List of first degree contacts (friends), second degree contacts (friends of friends), Nth degree contacts)• followers/ids - Returns an array of

numeric IDs for every user following the specified user

• Send and receive messages between users• direct_messages/new - Sends a new

direct message to the specified user from the authenticating user

• search - Returns tweets that match a specified query

Ask

Identifying Experts

Social Interaction / Collaboration

Quality control

Scalability

Trusting the Crowd – Wisdom of the Crowd

Advantages of Crowdsourcing over Social Networks

Thank You