We’re always hearing tips on how to make crowdsourcing projects work so I thought I would take a different approach and talk about four things you can do to ensure your crowdsourcing project is an utter failure.

The term crowdsourcing has dramatically risen in prominence over the last five years. Coined in 2006, crowdsourcing described a growing movement that, at the time, represented only a tiny sliver of the economy. Now, crowdsourcing as a business model has ballooned to such size that the term alone can’t capture the diverse segments within it.

As I talk with an increasing number of people about crowdsourcing, I continue to hear it referred to as an industry. Crowdsourcing is not an industry. I never cared too much to say anything about it until I started to see people claiming to know about crowdsourcing calling it an industry. The Daily Crowdsource takes pride in our centralized position in this space, so we feel the responsibility rests with us to correct common mistakes we see (and have an ability to influence). As crowdsourcing grows, Daily Crowdsource will continue to fix and correct these problems as often as we can.

I am pleased to announce that Peter LaMotte will be joining a group of elite crowdsourcing thought leaders today when he accepted his invitation to join Daily Crowdsource’s Crowd Leaders team. LaMotte is president of GeniusRocket, a platform that utilizes a curated crowdsourcing approach to deliver high-quality video, animation, and other creative content. GeniusRocket has produced advertising solutions for Fortune 500 corporations as well as local businesses and is home to a community of over 16,000 professionals across 180 countries.

The traditional approach to creating and bringing out new products has evolved into a precise process. It goes something like this: Research consumer trends so you know where things are going. Establish what your company needs for its business. Write and research a detailed brief. Write new product concepts. Research these in focus groups. Task your agency or R&D department to come up with a new idea or technology. More groups. Repeat. Research the prototype with consumers. Research test market and predict sales. (Are you still with me?). Research new identity, marketing, and distribution channels. Launch. Continuous in-market research. Start again.

We’re starting to see a few signs that the field is moving towards defining fundamental concepts that can be used to build common systems. A recent paper in the Communications of the ACM suggests the direction in which we may be headed.

It never ceases to amaze me.  People really still don’t “get” crowdsourcing.

Looking at a few crowdsourcing web sites and pondering some of the research that was recently presented at the Computer Human Interaction Conference led me to think about the crowd workplace and try to identify basic principles that we need to consider when we design that workplace.

Last week we looked at ways to use Google Keywords as a quantitative market research tool and how to use Etsy as a way to quickly and easily test customer demand.  This week, I want to explain how to use Flickr as a qualitative market research tool and crowdfunding as a means to get customers on board before you even decide whether you want to pursue a business.

Sometimes, the web can be a cruel place. Take the recent Friday Song controversy. In March, 13-year-old Rebecca Black made and uploaded an eye-wateringly cheesy music video all about her favorite day of the week. Result: 120 million YouTube hits and (to paraphrase Charlie Brooker) hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously screaming online abuse.