Arash Blog

The FLIRT Method of Crowdsourcing

Probably some of the best documentation to outline the foundations of Crowdsourcing, below is a summary of the main structure. To see the full research, you can read up on The FLIRT Model of Crowdsourcing by Sami Viitamaki

If you aren’t sure what Crowdsourcing is, you might need a little background first.

THE GROUPS

Creators(Core)
This is the group of people that is the most enthusiastic about the collaborative offer, and they go to great lengths in pursuit of creating something unique. They submit original translations as well as review others’ if given the chance that will earn them respect, status, acceptance, reputation, as well as material rewards. In other words, they are the competing to be the top contributor .

These will most likely be people consistently within our Top 10 and hold the highest rank
Critics (Inner Ring)
Critics are the people that do not produce like the Core, but are highly involved in the conversations. They criticize and offer development suggestions to creators but also act as evangelists to the wider audience by actively spreading the word about the stuff they like (or alternatively, stuff they hate) by e.g. blogging. They are often driven by a personal attachment to either the creators, the collaborative company (they might even work for the company) or the field of work, in which they perceive themselves to possess valuable expertise. Like the creators, they seek rewards in increased reputation and status, but in addition also gains in audience and authority. They seek less direct material benefit from the collaborative relationship, but are instead enthusiastic about the conversation itself and often seek to convert non-believers to their view.

Crowds (Outer Ring)
The larger crowd is participating on a much lower level of activity and involvement than the critics. They tag, recommend, rate, vote, send e-mail links to friends and sometimes write an occasional review. The interaction is therefore quite shallow compared to the previous level. There is however a great wisdom to be gathered from all this grassroots activity: their input elicited carefully, the crowds through their actions help organizing the alternative solutions and understanding their worth. They thus introduce comprehension to the community as they confirm the relevance and value of the best material produced in the inner core.

Outside of these groups are the traditional consumers that do not participate in any way to the collaborative offering, but instead only view content and perhaps use the product on offer.

THE ELEMENTS

Facilities
Facilities have to be in place for the participants to have a place for meeting and interaction. However it doesn’t mean that you have to build your own social network service from scratch. There are already networks in place which we can utilize. In addition, a hybrid service is also possible, in which some parts (e.g. discussion forums) of the community are maintained by you while parts of it (e.g. video content, etc) exist on a 3rd party service and are only displayed through us using existing technology (ie YouTube)

Language
The community are not stupid. They have to be treated with respect. Although this is already a well-worn principle, it continuously tends to be forgotten, most notably by large corporations with the most resources to pour into the issue. Fake bloggers and ‘user-generated content’ are bound for a beating. The communities worldviews and values need to be understood and appreciated.

Also the community’s potential social objects (photos on flickr, videos on youtube, jobs on linkedin, URL’s on del.icio.us) have to be recognized and utilized, since no community revolves around an idea of just having one (nor does it revolve around us, no matter how hard we wish it would).

Incentives
Nobody, not even your customers or biggest supporters like to work for free. The incentives required by the different groups vary, and some can be incentivized for less than others, and the issue has to be given very careful thought in engaging the community in an exchange meaningful to all participants. It is often (In fact it is rarely the case) not money alone that inspires the customer creators, but also, depending on the context, things such as fame and access to otherwise inaccessible channels or resources might prove as powerful incentives.

Most of the time, we will have to genuinely challenge your community and offer them a chance to enhance the quality of their life - even if it was just by the smallest amount - in order to stimulate them. Nobody is prepared to waste their free time to trivial, routine tasks with little or no ’show-off’ value.

Rules
Don’t expect a swarm of creativity by creating an open environment where everybody is free to do whatever might occur to them. Naturally, you have to think about, e.g. building constraints already for practical reasons, but also arbitrary constraints can be challenging, inspiring and produce unique and noteworthy results.

Apart from standards for the work you would like people to do, the rules of interaction need to be established for a fruitful conversation. At what point and how a community member needs to register can make or break a relationship very quickly.

Tools
The people obviously need to have access to the tools necessary to create and participate. These tools for the most part will need to be provided by you or it may be assumed that people already have them. Sometimes the distinction is not so clear cut and thus the question is always worth a thought.

In addition, you need to establish your own tools for gathering the results of the conversation and turning the collective wisdom into action