Jeff Howe Talks Crowdsourcing in Second Life

Transcript of a Q&A session with Jeff Howe about crowdsourcing in Second Life

What is crowdsourcing? I had heard the term, coined by Howe I think, but not followed it through to its definition. The gist: Throw some costly task to some sort of community where members can choose to work on it.

Second Life itself is the perfect example: Linden Labs said, "We need content to make a compelling environment. Here are the tools. Go for it." And Second Life residents responded, providing tons of content that's cheap in the eyes of Linden Labs because LL didn't pay to make it. Google's Image Labeller, where anonymous users pair up to label images for nothing more than points, strikes me as another example (and it's a brilliant idea).

An interesting discussion of what's going on in this space.