@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Digital & Internet Marketing

ReferralKey Can Help to Grow Your Business

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Tapping into the largest referral network available, ReferralKey has previously been described as a skillful collaboration of Angie’s List and LinkedIn, the social business network.

This system of referring business owners, among business owners and consumers allows users to build a network of contacts while building list of reputable businesses with reliable contractors and other professionals.

ReferralKey focuses on one prime element: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It also relies a bit on depending on others to have as much net etiquette as you do. While users build a network of contacts, they also refer those they know. Hopefully, those who get referrals will be kind enough or happy enough to promote you in your industry in return. In this manner, everyone is able to enjoy the benefits of this simple but valuable exchange.

Sign Up for ReferralKey

Signing up for ReferralKey is easy and requires no more than the basics. Once signed in users are brought swiftly to their dashboard where they can make decisions on elements of ReferralKey such as:

  • Profile Creation
  • Adding Colleagues
  • Setting Rewards for Referrals

When first visiting the dashboard users should select their settings options and choose how to receive alerts, as well as profile and other privacy options.

Users can also advertise their businesses, by location and industry on ReferralKey. Doing so will also register your listing with several search engines. This will also increase the odds of other consumers finding the listing.

Although users can create their own free profiles and accounts, users are only allowed to receive three referrals before they are prompted and required to purchase a paid account. There are different plans depending on user choice.

The light plan, referred to as the Silver Key, is $10 USD per month, the Gold Key plan cost $20 USD per month. Users should study the difference in plans before making an educated decision about which would be best for their small or growing business.

This service can be solid and quite successful if the referrals help a user’s business to generate a lucrative amount of revenue. With the easy-to-navigate and use site, while providing a great deal of helpful information regarding your own contacts and in your industry.

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A look at how important Twitter is to customer service: Palms Casino, Las Vegas

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I will be leaving for Las Vegas on Friday morning July 8, 2011. As part of any trip you start to pack, and then check your details. This trip to Vegas for me is one that has me excited,  joining college friends to celebrate a close friend soon to be wed.

As we got closer to the trip, I did a tweet or two about heading to Las Vegas for the first time. Clearly people are listening because I received responses from a few places and promoters about events, VIP options etc. The most notable was my Hotel, @PalmsLasVegas, not only did they respond but they engaged a little themselves.

I had happened to do an article unknowingly about Klout and its Klout Perks, they shared some info and thoughts as time went on.

Just before the trip to Las Vegas, I tossed out another tweet about looking forward to the trip, an epic win again for @PalmsLasVegas who responded again in short order… “travel safely! Look forward to having you here on property!”

Now critiques of Social Media and Twitter in particular would argue that this casual interaction doesn’t provide any real value, but it does and just when ultimately everything went wrong it undisputedly proved that it (social media) did (provide real value)!

Today (Thursday July 7, 2011) less then 24hrs before heading to Las Vegas one of the people in our group told us about a $15 Fee (per day) we would get on this trip, the first reaction in a chain of emails was heavily negative. The group quickly noticed that the Palms website was down, then others including myself could not reach anyone at the front desk. As I had had previous success with tweeting I turned to @PalmsLasVegas for answers.

As you can see in the screen snap shots @PalmsLasVegas quickly works through a few different things, they clarified the fee, apologized,  then turned to the issue with the website.

Remember this all started with the casual interaction that made me comfortable with the Palms Casino because of the twitter account @PalmsLasVegas. The concern that had been raised could not be resolved by traditional means via the phone and dare I also call the website a traditional means as well. The engagement using social media, twitter in particular allowed me to get the info I needed, or wanted. This, with the apology quickly resolved the concerns and negative association I was having with the Palms.

If you remember this entire resolve came from the website being down and the phones busy. When I took the next step and told @PalmsLasVegas that the website was down, they did not even know that there was an issue… here lies the undisputable ROI.

The social media team at the Palms shared that they are having issues finding any problem because the website is working on location, then they ask about what browser I am using. I quickly run the gauntlet using Chrome, IE and Firefox to confirm it’s not a browser issue, then after contacting several others at different locations and confirmed to @PalmsLasVegas the issue is not isolated or browser related. Within a few minutes the Palms website is live again and confirmed that they did have an issue and they “appreciated” the info.

What @PalmsLasVegas did with Social Media

  • Created a welcome place for a casual conversation
  • Provided a source of communication when others failed
  • Provided information and eased the concern of clients or customers (15 of them)
  • Discovered a larger issue of brand visibility (palms.com)
  • Won a influential twitter fan for life in @BasilPuglisi

In this case the choice for the Palms Casino and Resort in Las Vegas to engage in social media using twitter to provide some casual conversation and great customer service created an epic win. I for one, can’t even remember why it was I was originally concerned, can you?

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 *** NOTE *** On Sunday July 11, 2011 the Palms aquired @Palms and switched from @PalmsLasVegas to @Palms.

5 Top-Notch Marketing Conferences

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A great marketing conference will offer one-of-a-kind perspectives on trending insider information in traditional and digital marketing. Speakers will help to lead and enhance expert learning sessions for a great full-bodied conference program that should focus on marketing strategies, business and consumer relations management, and other vital elements of your company’s marketing campaigns that is carried on, offline.

Marketing Conferences 2011

There are quite a few marketing conferences that can benefit anyone from the smallest business owner to a well-known public brand.

  1. Contagious: The Science of Word-of-Mouth Marketing Conference is held on June 30th, 2011 in NY, New York. This unique marketing conference provides industry expertise about findings into what really influences consumer decisions and how to use the old fashioned method of word-of-mouth advertising to build a larger audience.
  2. The PRSA 2011 will be held in Orlando, Florida on Sunday October 16th. This conference with the intriguing title of Bringing Sexy Back to Marketing is focused on show-and-tell presentations that are loaded with real case study information on maintaining great offline marketing campaigns as well as integrating online and offline efforts for greater possibilities.
  3. The American Management Association produces many conferences and seminars all around the U.S. regularly. One of their most vital seminars is the Fundamentals of Marketing: Your Action Plan for Success course. This course takes those new to marketing and gives them a thorough overview of exactly what they need to know, the most basic fundamentals behind successful marketing campaigns. Important marketing skill development begins here. Since these are covered in cities in the U.S. at various times it is best to check there schedule for this program.
  4. The Direct Marketing Conference is held October 1st through 6th in 2011 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston, Massachusetts. This global event focuses on learning how to effectively develop successfully integrated marketing campaigns. Increasing the understanding of how to leverage data and other attributions. Networking with many peers from over 50+ countries can be quite an experience for any visiting this conference.
  5. The International Professional Communications Conference is an incredibly beneficial tool to any offline marketing campaign. This yearly conference held on the University of Cincinnati campus October 17th through October 19th can be an imperative element in training your entire marketing department on how to communicate effectively, and proactively with your possible consumers.

Over 90% of retail sales and word-of-mouth referrals still happen offline. It may be a dire mistake to put all of your marketing eggs into one digital basket with statistics like this still lingering around.

More than 93 percent of retail sales and 90 percent of word-of-mouth referrals happen offline. Yet, brands seem obsessed with using the latest and greatest social media tools to build customer loyalty. It is time to bring sexy back to word-of-mouth marketing and implement communications plans that fully engage customers, both online and offline.

  • Experience a show-and-tell presentation loaded with case studies and actionable best practice advice on how to engage and encourage customers to tell others about the brands they find talk-able.
  • Uncover the importance of investing in a strategy that engages employees and customers first, before you think about your technology plan.
  • Learn the importance of integrating online and offline programs, and tips for implementing both.

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Why Online Videos are Important to Your Business?

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Videos are increasingly attracting huge audiences online. People love to share online video content, especially young people. They post them on social networking sites or spread them through e mails. Marketing people say that if you are not using video in your marketing campaign, you might soon be behind the crowd.

Why is that?

Think about this simple fact: 1 minute of video equals 1.8 million words, as demonstrated by Dr. James McQuivey of Forester Research. The amount of information contained in one single frame can take 3 pages to describe. The mood, the colors, the message is seen immediately. It is a known fact that people engage more when they watch a video and tend to stay watching it. They are also happy to pass it along.

Since e commerce has become so impersonal, a video that shows the business owner, the business itself and the products makes it more personal and human. There is now a face behind the business. The choice of music in the background makes the experience fun and uplifting, retaining the audience.

How big will online video be in a marketing campaign? It will be huge the experts say. Statistics done by Cisco.com and Invodo.com reveals some amazing facts:

  • In their estimation video will be about 90% of all internet traffic in 2013.
  • 64% of retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer in average compared to a site that does not contain video. In the e commerce world, the longer a visitor stays on the site, the greater the chances of him turning into a buyer.
  • Between January 2010 and January 2011 viewing time of videos grew by an amazing 44.5%.
  • Video in e mail marketing has been shown to increase click through by 96%!
  • With the right optimization, video increases the chances of a front-page Google search result by 53 times.
  • Internet retailers report that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy the product than visitors who do not look at videos.

With these kinds of numbers, no wonder many experts turn to video in an attempt to get to the first page of the search engines.

Studies reveal the need for engagement from the viewers, and videos provide this kind of engagement. Just like comments and reviews on product pages, YouTube looks at the number of comments to a video when it decides which video should be on their front page. It’s more than just broadcasting, videos engage audiences and sends them to your site if the video is insightful, funny, gives information, educates and talks about people – how your product can help others to be more… what they want to be.

Where do most of those videos originate? On Google, 82% of video originate from YouTube, 3% from DailyMotion, 2% from MetaCafe, 1% from Google video and 10% from other sites which support self-hosted videos.

On Bing, 38% of the videos come from YouTube, 37% from Bing, 9% from Vevo, 4% from Fox News, 3% from CNN and other news organizations. The others, about 5%, come from different sites.

Does it mean we all need to become film makers? Not necessarily. There are many ways to create sales and promotions video; telling a story (which is the most complicated), using a simple camera and following the owner around, using screen shots, animation or just captions with music in the background to explain a complicated point. The big companies have been doing so for some years now but with modern technology, cheap cameras and free software, everyone can do it too.

Videos are an Information Experience:

Here is a law firm talking about the importantce of video, almost as if the lawyer is selling the product he just bought!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t2RmvrfV7k]

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Google +1 Goes Live with Adwords

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Google Experimental Labs has been testing its +1 feature, similar to a Facebook “Like” for a few months now. For those participating in the experiment, a +1 box at the end of each website’s title on a search engine query display allowed them to give their digital stamp of approval to sites they enjoy.

So far, the Google +1 experiment has fared reasonably well during its beta term. When participating in the experiment any user viewing a search engine query display can see where anyone in their network has given their virtual thumbs up on a site.

Adwords +1

Now however, Google has plans to add the +1 feature to their Adwords advertisements. This means that if your business has an Adwords campaign, any viewing this ad can choose to give it their approval with a +1 click. This also means that anyone in that persons network who sees the same ad, will see that their friend has also given the ad their approval.

How could this be beneficial to your business? If, for instance, you are in the travel business and are using a Google Adwords campaign to advertise your seaside hotel in Florida, and a group of office workers in Illinois are planning a visit to your area, likely many will take to the net.

If office worker A’s daughter took a trip to the same area last year, loved your resort, and gave the Adwords display a +1 click to show her approval, perhaps office worker A, will also give it a click, check into your resorts amenities, and decide upon you for their impending stay.

This worker also likely has their co-workers in their network, so as their co-workers do their own searches, and see your ad, they could see the same ad, +1’d by their trusty co-workers, and now you have several who are on the way to your resort as quickly as they can get there.

+1 Your Landing Page

Business owners will now also want to take advantage of adding the Google +1 option to their landing pages, right next Twitter and Facebook most likely. Adding this will give viewers the ability to +1 your site from the inside, and not just from their displayed search engine results.

This gives those who are fans of your website the ability to share with their friends without intrusive interaction. They will simply be able to see whether or not any of their friends connections would choose your site out of a list of sites, or advertisements, when queried. 

Early critiques attack the need to be logged into a google account to particiapte or see the results, but prticiaption issues exist with facebook too. Even more intereting is that the latest trend in sharing seems to be LinkedIn. While the +1 has done well in the early beta stages, only time will tell how google’s answer to the facebook “like” will playout over time.

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7 Digital and Internet Media Conferences you should know about

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Part of any smart businesses marketing plan is the continued education of the employees responsible for these vital tasks. For this reason many businesses schedule regular digital and internet conferences for their marketing departments.

7 Highly Informative Digital and Internet Media Conferences

  1. Over 500 of the top decision makers in the entertainment, technology, and media industries came together in Arlington, Virginia at the 8th Annual Digital Media Conference East held on June 17th, 2011. The event consisted of twenty separate panels spanning six content tracks. Featured tracks included digital media, mobile, TV/Video, Social, Marketing, and Law and Policy elements.
  2. The National Conference for Media Reform of 2011was held from April 8th until the 10th and helped to join thousands of educators, media specialist, activists, journalist, policymakers, and more who simply want to better our media option. This three day conference included panels, hands-on workshops, film screenings, meetings, live entertainment, speeches and more.
  3. Detroit Michigan hosted the Allied Media Conference as a part of the Allied Media Projects network from June 23rd to the 26th of 2011 . This conference focuses on organic relationship-building and the concept of do-it-yourself media. It seems that each year this conference brings more businesses owners who are interested in utilizing interactive media as part of social organizational strategy.
  4. September 18th through the 22nd will bring the Web of Change Conference in Hollyhock, Cores Island, British Columbia. Celebrating its 11th year this conference always brings alternatives and trending methods to harness the power of the world wide web in effecting social changes around the globe.
  5. The Media Relations in the Digital Age Conference held in Hong Kong on July 7th and 8th 2011 is focused on learning how some of the more widely renowned brands successfully incorporate the digital world into media strategies. This can help to build leverage on many different platforms to help deliver a lucrative brand message.
  6. The TM’s Forum Management World Americas Conference will run from November 8th to the 10th in November of 2011. Held in Orlando, Florida this communications management conference has a bit of something for everyone from suppliers and providers to business partnership education. This conferences focus is to teach technical as well as business strategies to encourage success in the market of tomorrow.
  7. LeWeb, a Paris based Internet Ecosystem Conference will be held from December 7th until the 9th in a three day conference on important and trending information in the web marketplace. With over 3000 planned participants from more than sixty countries this group of executives, investors, senior members of the press, and entrepreneurs are sure to present an unforgettable conference with a wealth of vital information.

With tons of conferences held on industry information and trending standards in digital and internet media each year, there is quite likely one held not far from your own back yard. Joining Meetup groups or watching out on your social media accounts can be one of the best ways to keep informed of up-and-coming trends in digital and internet media.

Stay Tuned for Social Media Conferences and Marketing Conferences.

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Social Media For Recruiting

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It wasn’t long ago that social media was defined solely as a way to learn how a friend just ate at a great restaurant or who was getting engaged.

However, social media continued its evolution and became particularly useful for companies to locate, recruit, and learn about candidates for open positions. Using social media for recruiting has quickly ignited a hiring fire, lighting the way for many. While sites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are still often used for ‘fun’, as well as business, others like LinkedIn have become known as more ‘serious’or ‘professional’ space.

So how does a company effectively search and target potential candidates from such a large pool though?

Recruit from Your Own List of Friends and Followers

Using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can all be useful in recruiting by being able to distribute information about open positions quickly and efficiently to large number of people. Recruiters know they’re distributing information to candidates who will take notice, especially since jobseekers are turned off by sites like CareerBuilder.com which have become filled with spam.

There are a number of free resources available. On most social media profiles, companies can use their status box in order to announce open positions, and of course good old fashioned networking is the best tool of all. On LinkedIn, after building connections of industry peers including co-workers, clients, and local companies, one can browse the profiles of each other’s connections, and then ask for introductions.

Link Up with LinkedIn

Another useful way to recruit on LinkedIn is by joining relevant groups and staying active within them by participating in the group’s discussions and keeping their eyes open for those who are active and knowledgeable.

While similar tools are available on almost all social media sites, LinkedIn gives recruiters the ability to not only view a candidate’s resume, they can also see any recommendations the candidate has received from their peers. The ability to give and receive visible recommendations is a tool that’s not as ‘visible’ and specific on other social media sites. Additionally, recruiting companies on LinkedIn can post available jobs and sign up for LinkedIn Talent Advantage, basically a toolbox for recruiters, both for fees.

There’s no reason to be afraid of approaching candidates. A recent survey on Internships.com found that almost 80 percent% of respondents didn’t mind if a company made contact about potential opportunities, so now is the time to make use of the many tools social media has to offer.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exfA5y4txms]

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The Pros and Cons of Article Base Sites

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The Pros and Cons of Article Base Sites

Although many small business and subsequently website owners may have their content creation options well in hand, others can struggle when it comes to supplying their websites or blogs with fresh topics and themes. Though the concept of article bases are far from new, they are certainly increasing in popularity as small businesses spring up all over the net daily.

How Can an Article Base Benefit a Small Business?

If you asked most website owners if they would like free content for their sites or blogs, you would be likely to get an odd look, a sly smile, and questioned on what kind of tricks you have up your sleeve. However, article bases really are a cut-and-dried option in many aspects.

  • Users can sign up to most article base sites for no cost
  • Small businesses owners can browse topics, read over articles, and choose those they enjoy for their own sites
  • Most sites have no limit on how many articles or blogs a user can choose to utilize from their available content

Article base sites sound pretty lucrative for a business owner so far, but what are the direct benefits for a company’s bottom line and their web presence or brand awareness?

Article Base Pros

  • Money that would be used to pay for content can be used in another needy facet of a small businesses marketing campaign
  • Business owners who create their own content can save their valuable time by using free content from article base sites
  • Browsing article sites can give a business owner ideas about new aspects or elements of their business that may attract the general public
  • Business owners may gain more insight as to what they can expect when and if they do pay for their content in the future
  • Using article base sites may help a small business website owner to find a content creation employee at an affordable price

With all of those pros, exactly why isn’t every business owner on the net clamoring to get the best articles from base sites daily? It may be due to a few of the important cons that can come with the usage of them.

Article Base Cons

Many business owners forego the usage of article bases for a few reasons.

Proper Crediting

Most often articles on article bases will come with either an excerpt at the bottom of the article, or even a patch of HTML code to paste under the content once it is placed on the businesses site. This is part of the give and take element that article bases promote. Web site owners get free content, content creators receive free exposure and even great back links to their own sites in their credited excerpt.

Having citations or credits at the bottom of content fairly eliminates it as a website content option and secludes it fairly well to the realm of blogs.

Conflict of Interests

Many of those who supply free content to article aggregate sites are doing so in effort to promote their own small businesses. So while it may not be immensely harmful to your profitability if a shoe store in California is linked to your Maine-based offline business, a user who runs his marketing business online, will not benefit, and indeed may suffer if they use article base content that leads to another marketing specialists website.

Stale, Outdated, and Copied

It may be in the eye of the beholder (and Google) whether or not an article is worth using if it has been used elsewhere , but commonly it is bad practice to use content that is not 100% original. This rule can be ignored, but only in the case of truly spectacular, highly-viewed content. Case-in-point, if you find an article on an article base that does not make you want to do a little dance, pump your fists in the air, and share with all of your friends, chances are, it will not give Google the warm fuzzies either. No one wants the cold shoulder from the Big G.

So Who Is Using Article Bases, and How?

Many business do use article base content, however, using them under the notion that even copied or stale content is better than no content is the absolute polar opposite of correct. Your site will fare much better with one of those fist pumping, celebratory articles than thirty overused, stale, and wildly credited ones.

Fortunately, there has been one glaringly large benefit for many users. Guest blogging is widely recognized, utilized, and has proven a successful option in content management, so using article base content in this manner may be the perfect option for a few reasons.

  • High-quality content that isn’t copied to a long list of other sites, but a short list of high-ranking ones, can be beneficial to the blog by adding outgoing links and regular content for your viewers.
  • Adding them to a running blog, instead of static web content, can help to avoid the no-no’s that can cause the Googlebot to flag your site negatively.
  • Using the content of the content creator who is intent on promoting themselves, their product or services, or other opportunities will likely cause the content to be shared on the authors website and social medias as well. This can in essence be a form of free social media marketing, although, not without the previously mentioned risk of diverting your customers to someone else’s business if you are not careful about the aspects of the author content you choose.

Article bases do have their pros and cons, but can always be at least minutely beneficial as long as the website owner uses caution and strategic planning when choosing which authors, and their related links, will be of benefit, or at least not detrimental to your own brand awareness.

 

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Klout Measures Your Clout On LinkedIn Social Business Network

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Have you ever wondered how your resume stacks up against others with much the same experience as you? Fortunately, Klout, the startup that previously only measured a person’s influence across the social media board, and LinkedIn, the business-related social networking site, has now partnered up to allow users to see their own influence when it comes to their professional LinkedIn profiles.

Klout and LinkedIn Action

Klout will now quickly assess a user’s ability to influence action on LinkedIn. It will also measure who users may be influencing on LinkedIn and how they are being influenced.

Now when LinkedIn is added to the Klout dashboard, the LinkedIn connections a user has, as well as their activities on the business networking site, will be collaborated with the user’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. From these three accounts, a Klout score will be generated.

Klout CEO and co-founder Joe Fernandez has shared that LinkedIn has been one of the top request from users who want to expand their Klout scores with information from other social media networks besides the previously integrated Twitter and Facebook sites. Klout also shows on their dashboard that integration for Foursquare is not far behind.

While Klout developers passed up the chance to share the exact specifics on what is analyzed, they have shared that part of the analysis will be formulated by the users interactions on LinkedIn. These interactions include who users are interacting with, the type of content users share with their contacts, and the users influence in relation to the responses from those on their LinkedIn network. Klout has also made it clear that the number of connections have no influence in users Klout scoring system. Quality, not quantity, is what Klout is looking for when determining users scores.

Why Does Klout Score Matter?

Unless you have been living under a digital rock, you are well aware of the role that social media plays in internet business and marketing. However, the common sense aspect may not be all that is important when it comes to your Klout and social media influence scores.

Currently, brands and businesses are beginning to test programs that will provide benefits to social media and network users with higher Klout scores. In addition, Klout is currently scouting to help identify experts on a large variety of topics.

Last but not least, if your career involves working with and managing social media accounts, a high Klout score will obviously give you a leg up on your competition.

Who Uses Klout?

Obviously, anyone in a business that will benefit from a great online presence will benefit from a increasing Klout score, but who is actively using this method of measuring a person’s social networking influence?

One of the most well-known Klout reliant companies is the Huffington Post. They have integrated Klout into their article posts to help them locate the highest influencers. The Huffington Post is known for being on the cutting edge of the integration of social media on their site. Huffington Post viewers gives users the ability to not only know who is mentioning an article, but who the highest influencers are on a topic.

Clout with Klout in Vegas

Who doesn’t want some kind of clout in Vegas?  When visitors check into the Palm Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, they may be surprised at what influences the treatment they receive while checked into this top notch resort.

As visitors approach the check-in desk, and their information is pulled up on the reservation screen, another element is included besides just their credit card and personal request. If a visitor suddenly finds themselves invited to the exclusive Hugh Hefner Villa, they may be entirely shocked to understand that it is their Klout score that garnered them this top-notch invitation.

Palm Hotel and Casino uses Klout scores to judge each visitors worth as a consumer. The Palms’ marketing office, Jason Gastwirth is building the Klout Klub for visitors who have the highest and most influential Klout scores. These influential visitors may be privy to some of the Palms’ most impressive set of amenities.

The Palm Hotel and Casino seems to have the right idea when it comes to their influence on consumers who are likely to happily Tweet, Facebook, Digg, and Stumbleupon their social medias to laud the benefits they received while visiting this highly social media oriented resort. While giving away a few amenities, they are also building some serious Klout for themselves. The praise, @mentions and other comments they receive are well worth the cost of giving away a few perks to highly influential social media users.

 

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Crowdsourcing

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Outsourcing is already an old word, and we all know what it means – sending jobs to countries where the labor is cheaper than in the US. The new worldwide pool of cheap labor, they say, is called Crowdsourcing.It means taking a task, especially in software design, and putting it out there to the world to solve.

The word was coined in an article in Wired magazine in 2006. Jeff Howe published an article called “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”.  He wrote: “Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing.”

What used to be top secret industrial secrets in the past, became open-source. It was sent out to the world to improve on, solve problems or fix. An open call to an unidentified group of people to solve a problem. It taps to the knowledge and wisdom of the many, for the benefit of many. Those who ask for help in an open-source know that their programs are now open to all. In Crowdsourcing it is between the companies and the solvers.

The “crowd” – the people involved, usually form an online community and submit solutions. The best solutions – also chosen by the crowd – go on to the source who posed the problem. The solvers are sometime rewarded, either monetarily or by fame. Crowdsourcing produces solutions from amateurs and experts alike, who like to solve problems as an intellectual challenge, or for a prize.

Eli Lilly the pharmaceutical company funded InnoCentive.com in 2001 to connect with people outside the company who could help develop drugs and speed the process. Very quickly they opened their doors to other companies who were interested in reaching their network of unknown experts. Companies like Boeing, DuPont and Procter & Gamble post their hardest problems on the site.

As an example: One of the problems posted was how to inject Fluoride in powder form into a tube of toothpaste without dispersing it. Colgate Palmolive’s problem was solved by someone who knew the solution the moment he read the problem. He suggested imparting an electric charge to the Fluoride and grounding the tubes. This person became famous in the “crowd” circles.

Another example: when HTC came out with the first Windows operated smartphone, the expectations were very high. Here it is again, the old revelry between Apple and Microsoft. The iPhone was so innovative, let’s see what the PC people can do to improve on it. The phone flew off the shelves and some stores reported a waiting list of over hundred people.

Not a month went by, and the bubble burst. The phone did not perform well. Callers to T-Mobile tech support, the company that sold the phone, were told to remove the battery at least twice a week to reboot it. Not an acceptable solution in our fast moving world.

At about the same time, Google open-sourced it’s Android. Within a few days a forums was opened and linked to many tech sites. The discussions were the disappointment and what to do with this new phone. One person, known only be his code name, took it upon himself to coordinated an effort to adapt the Android to the HTC phones.

2 days later the program was posted online, with instructions. Improvements were posted 2-3 times a day. Different people took upon themselves to work on specific problems; the camera, the map, the contact list. Less than a week later the Android operating system was sitting solidly on HTC phones.

The companies who post problems on InnoCentive’s site these days, post the reward that comes with solving the problem. The rewards pay from $1,000,000 for doubling the speed of Gnome Mapping to $10,000 for The Economist-InnoCentive Human Potential Index Challenge. Groups are formed and share in the reward. Is Crowdsourcing the new hobby? A form of cheap labor? New form of R & D? Yes to all of those. It is tapping to the smarts of people, whomever or wherever they are.

 

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