Crowdrise is an online fundraising site that uses the power of the crowd to gather donations for U.S. registered charities. Started by actor Edward Norton in early 2010 for the purpose of raising money for the conservation of a Kenyan land reserve, it soon grew into a useful tool that allows you to “inform, fundraise, and build support because it connects you to the crowd.”

Minted, launched two years ago by Mariam Naficy, is another success story in the crowdsourcing world, that also helps designers get life long annuity for the sales generated from the designs created by them.

An online furniture store has emerged that uses crowdsourcing to design furniture.  Made has taken the traditional process of designing furniture and converted it into an interactive experience that removes showrooms, warehouses, and additional expenses.

The internet has revolutionized the way many businesses and industries are operated. A new site named FashionStake is helping enhance the fashion industry by incorporating crowdsourcing techniques. With an incentive based platform, Fashionstake attracts users by offering many “luxury designer perks & privileges.” By collecting member feedback and suggestions FashionStake is able to shape fashion collections and trends.

36 companies have joined up to form the Crowdsortium, a group of experts on the crowdsourcing topic. Not intended to police the crowdsourcing scene, the Crowdsortium simply hopes to make the growing phenomenon a better experience for everyone involved.

A new crowdsourcing web application has launched providing people and businesses with further opportunities to gather ideas and recognize patterns through the analysis of large populations. In August, Ideavibes launched its crowdsourcing engine, enabling users to customize and brand the web based application before being opened to the crowd. The Ottawa based company is looking to fill a niche for smaller businesses that are in need of crowdsourcing tools.

Focus is a new IT analysis service and social media platform that launched in May of 2010.  CEO, Scott Albro, hopes Focus will persuade other IT analysis platforms to change the way they operate. Focus offers free business and tech knowledge and expertise to its registered users.

More films these days are being funded by the power of the crowd – crowdfunding, in other words. The amounts raised can hardly be considered peanuts, considering “Art Machine” raised more than $26,000 using a crowdfunding platform. There are three major crowdfunding platforms available right now, including IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, and RocketHub.

Crowdsourcing just recently started taking hold in the UK thanks in part largely to the recently elected Government using it to gage public opinion about potential spending cuts. However, Jason Burrows, creator of the crowdsourcing platform Crowdworks, has noticed an increasing trend in the use of crowdsourcing in the UK with companies such as BT and Unilever enjoying a successfully crowdsourced TV campaign. Burrows’ platform provides a different, yet cost effective form of crowdsourcing that will allow any business or organisation to capture and share ideas and feedback in real-time.

Web video has seen explosive growth currently contributing to 51% of all Internet traffic, according to the latest numbers.  YouTube has obviously contributed to it by serving 2 billion video views daily, but web video goes beyond YouTube with sites like Vimeo, Daily Motion, and even Facebook.