Crowdsourcing. Honestly, I'm surprised nobody's trademarked the term yet. Over the last couple of days two reporters have asked me about crowdsourcing and open source, both in reference to Second Life, as well as more generally. While the actual word is relatively new, the concepts behind crowdsourcing are very traditional, and have been around for about as long as the history of humanity.

There are plenty of examples, the crowdsourced Clean Up Australia Day has been running for almost 20 years. Barn-raisings and early cobblestone roads are other fine examples. The thing everyone wants to know though is why people are willing to do all this work for free, and why some crowdsourcing efforts fall flat.

The answer to the first is that people aren't doing it for free, even if you think they are. The answer to the second is crowdsourcing efforts that most often fail are ones where the business thinks that the crowd is doing it for free.

Both of those probably deserve a longer look.

Network gains

In your basic crowdsourcing system, everyone is gaining. The gains just aren't necessarily obvious or immediate. You fill the hole in the muddy track outside your house with a stone that you find that has about the right size and shape. No biggie, right? You fill a few holes. Your neighbor does too. A few years down the track, you've got a cobblestone road, and none of you have muddy feet, and nobody really put all that much effort into it.

This is a network gain. One filled hole does not reward you for your efforts, any more than one railway station, or one telephone and a hundred metres of wire. You need more of them, and every single one adds value to the whole system. The telephone and the Internet are insignificant with a single phone or computer. A hundred million, though, and you're talking value.

The Internet is one of the biggest crowdsourced ventures so far undertaken. Millions of lines of open source code (or products based on that code), protocols developed by ad-hoc groups of people, and network links that span oceans, or drape across backyard fences. Developed by students, teachers, unemployed people, IT professionals, the gifted, the handicapped, small businesses, large businesses, Buddhist monks.

We're benefiting. That much is clear. A cable strung. A router installed. A webserver or mailserver set up on a laptop rescued from a dumpster. In some parts of the world solar powered laptops, and a network carrier that's a wireless provider on a bicycle who cycles between villages periodically to let people exchange their email via UUCP.

The Internet isn't everywhere, but people are stringing the nerves and sinews of it wherever they can. Nobody's being paid, but they're not doing it for free, either. Everyone benefits.

Clean Up Australia day is another good example. It's a lot of work, and you may not get a lot of direct, personal benefit from driving out to some stretch of road and wandering up and down with your family, collecting trash -- but while you are doing it, other people are cleaning in your street; at that park where you take the dog for a run; at the beach where you go with your family; in the street where you work. People participate because everyone is benefiting - even those people who are ill, or handicapped or can't or won't contribute. It's the open source idea, or crowdsourcing in a very pure form.

Every piece of content in Second Life contributes to the overall value of Second Life, both for the users and for Linden Lab.

Crowdsourcing For Failure

Crowdsourcing can also fall miserably flat. This happens when a venture that relies on crowdsourcing misunderstands the crowd. Yes, the crowd isn't being paid, but the crowd is benefiting. To successfully crowdsource anything, you need to understand what the crowd is getting out of it, and make sure they get it.

If you think your crowd are willing slave labor, then your efforts will ultimately end in failure (at best) or disaster. Treating the crowd as a free labor force for your profit won't work. If you try to profit from your crowd, at their expense, you will fail, quite probably miserably.

Your crowdsourcing operation needs to make sure that everyone who participates (and perhaps also, people who do not) profits from the efforts of the crowd. You can make money hand-over-fist, and the crowd won't mind - and will even cheerfully assist - so long as they are satisfied with the benefits of their participation - that means you have to understand what those benefits are, and provide for them.

Ultimately, crowdsourcing is a partnership, not an exploitation. Those who try to exploit the crowd will have the crowd turn on them or walk away from them. Those who partner with the crowd for the gain of all, gain from the crowd, as the crowd gains from the efforts of every member; but you need to remember what the crowd is getting out of it -- and sometimes the crowd needs reminding of that too.

Second Life

Second Life can be considered to be a big crowdsourcing operation or not to be one at all, depending on your perspective. The content creators, builders, scripters and helpful people of Second Life aren't doing what they do for Linden Lab. They're doing it for each-other, and for Second Life. That Linden Lab benefits directly from this process is almost incidental. It is unmanaged crowdsourcing of the sort that traditionally springs up through human history, and that means it has its downsides as well.

The most obvious downside is that the crowd simply has its own notions, some of which are crowd wisdom, and some are sheerest groupthink. The crowd of Second Life chooses its own direction, wherever it chooses. Linden Lab, on the other hand, make their decisions based on the long-term survival and prosperity of Second Life, whether the crowd likes it or not. Linden Lab is not exploiting the crowd, but in many cases this arrangement makes Linden Lab the adversary or an adversity that the crowd feels must be overcome.

This places the Second Life crowd somewhere between the extremes of success and failure. It has the ability to go either way as the desires of the crowd clash with the plans and business necessities of Linden Lab. I wouldn't necessarily want to put money on how that whole balance might play out, but for the moment it seems to actually be in balance. Time will tell, and it's going to be an interesting ride finding out.