crowdsourcing

English

Etymology

Coined 2006 by Wired magazine writer Jeff Howe. From crowd +‎ sourcing, by analogy with outsourcing.

Noun

crowdsourcing (countable and uncountable, plural crowdsourcings)

1. (neologism) The delegation of a task to a large diffuse group in order to introduce new or more developed skill sets and improve efficiency. There is usually no substantial monetary compensation involved.
   • June 2006, Jeff Howe, Wired Magazine 14.06, "The Rise of Crowdsourcing" [1]:

     "P&G is one of InnoCentive’s earliest and best customers, but the company works with other crowdsourcing networks as well."

   • January 2007, Jessi Hempel, Business Week, "Tapping the Wisdom of the Crowd":

     "While not a new phenomenon, crowdsourcing is really growing as a business trend."

   • July 2007, Twisted, comp.lang.java.programmer:

     "Costs can be reduced by crowdsourcing more content."

Related terms

• crowdworker

Translations

delegation of a task

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 眾包／众包 (zhòngbāo), 众包 (zhòngbāo)

• Finnish: joukkoistus, joukkoistaminen (fi)
• French: production participative (fr) f, externalisation ouverte (fr) f
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Malay: sumber khalayak
• Norwegian: crowdsourcing (no) m or f
• Russian: краудсо́рсинг (ru) m (kraudsórsing)
• Spanish: crowdsourcing m
• Welsh: torfoli (cy)

Verb

crowdsourcing

1. present participle of crowdsource