Crowdsourcing: Give them fishing rods not fish

Remember the old saying:

“Give a man a fish; and you have fed him for a day. Give a man the tools to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime”

Consider the alternative for the Internet society:

“Give a your audience content, and they’ll be engaged for today. Give your audience the tools to create their own content and they’ll be engaged for a lifetime (or at least until the next big thing)”

Digital can be used to create material that can really engage your audience, but the possibilities are far greater when you let your audience take over. This is what many are calling crowdsourcing. As long as you provide useful tools then people will keep using them and your content need never go out of date, what’s more with every single member of the audience offering information the possibilities for the content is taken to a whole new level.

Google are well aware of the possibilities of crowdsourcing. They are looking to take their Maps service to the next level by allowing users to add roads and now recommended routes. It’s simply not possible for Google to track every new road, and check for the latest quick routes, and there’s no need for them to do so when their audience can do it for them. Thanks to their audience Google can map the world at a previously impossible level, details of every road, every building can be available and updated in real time.

It’s not hard to see why the likes of youtube and facebook are currently some of the biggest brands around.

Image: Daily Record