Crowdsourcing Essay

Abstract

The proliferation of mobile devices has changed the way people communicate and perform their day-to-day dealings. In particular, the widespread availability of mobile devices has enabled information distribution and sharing to be done almost instantly at your fingertips. As a result, many mobile crowdsourcing applications have been developed for this purpose. The aim is to find out what the crowdsourcing is, its advantages and disadvantages and get some popular examples of mobile crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing: what is it?

The term was introduced in June 2006 by editors of Wired magazine, Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson in the article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”. According to their definition, crowdsourcing represents

Most crowdsourcing projects are strictly limited in period of time. This allows you to not delay a decision issue, but rather to have a clear time reference points.

• Saving of financial resources. This statement is not always true but most crowdsourcing really achieves results with less. This is primarily due to the fact that financial compensation received only one or a few winners, but the amount of people involved is greater [7].

Weaknesses of Crowdsourcing

• A key tenet of opponent of crowdsourcing is that the crowd, in their view, can not be reasonable. It is not able to create something of value, because it is composed of very different people who are unable to agree, and to give an integral solution.

• Another weak point is the principle of fair compensation. Indeed the prize receives only a limited number of people. The rest worked for nothing. In this regard, there is an opinion that professionals do not look in the direction of crowdsourcing, as they value their time to spend it for nothing.

• Also crowdsourcing is not always the cheapest way. For example, the creation of a logo or design is often cheaper to buy by a cheap designer. Also the need to allocate resources to viewing options, communication with the audience, advertising support also require

Using sensors fitted in recent smartphones. The app can gather data about temperature. Pressure. Light intensity and humidity in any given location. Smartphones create a wide network of tine, mobile weather stations, offering real-time weather information for a variety of locations throughout the globe [6].

Crowdsourcing apps are changing everything from the way we travel, to the way we work, to the way we gather information. Fig. 1[3] represents the areas which the most popular areas of everyday life in the context of mobile crowdsourcing apps.

Fig. 1. Areas of mobile crowdsourcing apps [3].

Conclusion

People, who participate in crowdsourcing projects, not just spend their time or donate money, they become members of a big common cause, make a contribution to it and enjoy its success. For most crowdsourcing projects people are not just a source of data, they are rather partners who solve any challenge, and in a world where everyone wants to have as much freedom as possible and not be tied to the computer, mobile crowdsourcing becomes convenient way to find needed information in any sphere of human