crowdsourcing

Coined by American journalist Jeff Howe in 2006, see quotations. From crowd +‎ sourcing, by analogy with outsourcing.

crowdsourcing (countable and uncountable, plural crowdsourcings)

1. 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.

   Synonym: open outsourcing

   • 2006 June, Jeff Howe, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”, in Wired‎^[1], archived from the original on 21 July 2006:

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

   • 2007 January, Jessi Hempel, “Tapping the Wisdom of the Crowd”, in Business Week:

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

   • 2007 July, Twisted, comp.lang.java.programmer (Usenet):

     Costs can be reduced by crowdsourcing more content.

• crowdworker

• lazyweb

crowdsourcing

1. present participle and gerund of crowdsource