eYeka put together a pretty sweet looking timeline that shows how some of the hottest Fortune 500 companies have used crowdsourcing over the past five years. 

In early 2012 I started researching all the biggest providers of crowdfunding services, and hadn’t even heard of some of the companies I researched. Life seemed to evolve around the single biggest player, Kickstarter, with others far behind. What I realized during my research, was the small players are going to stay small, while the major players are going to grow exponentially as crowdfunding matures. With crowdfunding holding such strong roots to “crowds,” it’s an obvious assumption.

At times where drastic cuts are being implemented in education, health and culture – possibly the three mainstays of a developed society – and citizens are facing an unforeseeable future, young aspiring artists turn to alternative ways of trying to make their dreams come true.

Crowdfunding began as a way for creative artists to pool together money directly from the crowd to put toward their next film, album, or exhibit without having to bow low before investors and executives. But as crowdfunding becomes more viable a means for financing creative projects, the bigger boys and girls like Jon Heder and Whoopi Goldberg are encroaching on this territory, saturating the pool with their somewhat unfair advantage –– celebrity.

Two years ago, a broad study at the Carnegie Mellon University psychologists came to the conclusion that the performance of groups solving cognitive tasks is strongly correlated with the social sensitivity and not – as one might think – with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members. 

The UK Government has announced its reform programme for the civil service - while this might not sound so exciting, it could mark a significant advance for crowdsourcing better policy and ultimately have profound implications for how government works around the world.

It’s been known for quite some time that the internet is the number one place to express creativity. As a medium for self-expression, users have options such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites that rely on user-generated content. What many people might not realize is the sheer volume of creativity that is available online.

We love it when people comment on our posts. Of course, It's always fun seeing our views & shares going up and up on each post, but it's even better when we can hear the voice behind our readers. That's why we wanted to point out some of our favorites of late.

Crowdsourcing is becoming increasingly popular, and it's spreading through the Internet like mold on an expired piece of bread: new platforms are emerging all around the world, success stories are told every day, and it's even starting to get some legislative support.

Nothing in technology should catch your imagination more than microtasking. That's how I feel. Back when I was doing social-media for nonprofits up in Idaho, when I first discovered Mechanical Turk & Sparked.com, I was mesmerized at first glance. (And my swooning has yet to diminish...)