IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013 - 10

platforms on different subjects that try to attract the
matching Internet users for their platforms.
As an example, Amazon focuses on a task-based
marketplace that requires explicit collaboration.
Requirement
aMT Ya
Wikipedia
requesters are invited to issue human-intelligence
Outsourcing
Y
n
n
tasks (HITs) requiring a certain qualification to the
ease-of-Use Consumer
~
Y
Y
AMT. The registered customers post mostly tasks
ease-of-Use Producer
n
~
~
with minor effort that, however, require human capaSocial Profiles
n
Y
n
bilities such as transcription, classification, or categoautomated Management n
n
n
rization. Crowdsourcing platforms such as AMT have
Symbols: Y = supported; N = not supported;
become hugely popular counting about 400 000 reg~ = partially supported,
istered users as of today.
Managing the capabilities and preferences of memBesides tagging images and evaluating or ratbers as well as task assignments becomes a major
ing objects, creating speech and language data with
challenge and undertaking, which can no longer be
AMT [2] and the transcription of spoken language
performed manually due to scale and community evo[7] are in the focus of the large application area
lution. Other examples of online communities attractof language processing and language studies [8].
ing users to perform knowledge intensive activities
recently various platforms have been established
include Yahoo! Answers (YA)4 or the wikipedia
that interface with and harness AMT, in order to proproject.5 The incentive schemes of these platforms
2
vide more customized services, such as SmartSheet
are either based on monetary rewards or commuand CrowdFlower.3
nity-based reputation mechanisms. wikipedia users,
however, are often driven by their self-motivation.
Crowdsourcing as a New Business Model
All these online platforms including AMT, YA, and
Today, ever-changing requirements force
wikipedia face the challenge of quality
in-house processes to rapidly adapt to
assurance. Since online communities
Changes
changing situations in order to stay comlargely rely on volunteers, guaranteeing
involve not
petitive. workflow models as introduced
the quality of provided content or tasks
in the 1980s aim at defining the sequence
is difficult. Quality issues can be caused
only the need
of steps performed by company employby a number of factors. One essential
for process
ees with the goal of reducing production
issue impacting, for example, a task's
adaptation,
costs and increasing the quality of delivquality may be self misjudgment of
but also
ered services. recent industry trends have
skills. A person may underestimate the
led to an attempt to standardize interfaces
knowledge and effort required to perrequire the
of electronic services and to automate the
form a task in a timely and reliable manadditional
interactions between them to offer online
ner. Other issues in open web-based
inclusion
services more efficiently.
systems include fairness and tolerable
of new
However, interactions and composibehavior.
tions often cannot be defined in a topOpen calls may invite people to overcapabilities
down manner without the ability to react
load themselves with too many tasks.
and
to unexpected changes such as resource
Scale and constantly changing commuknowledge.
shortage. Changes involve not only the
nities make the automated management
need for process adaptation, but also
of crowdsourcing platforms a top priorrequire the additional inclusion of new capabiliity. The loose structure of current crowdsourcing platties and knowledge, previously unavailable within
forms allows members to become active or inactive as
the company. Thus, outsourcing of parts of business
they prefer, and to leave and join the platform at any
processes became an attractive model. The potential
time. Moreover, this flexibility affects the processing
behind the crowdsourcing business model was soon
of the outsourced tasks.
adapted by large online companies such as Amazon,
Table I gives an overview of the current features of
Google, or Yahoo!, to name a few, which have recogsome platforms that are available today.
nized the opportunities behind such mass collaboraIn current business models where companies wish
tion systems [3] for both improving their own services
to outsource parts of their in-house workflows, the step
and for offering new services. All of them provide
of Outsourcing to a crowdsourcing platform includes,
Table I
Crowdsourcing Requirements Overview

http://www.smartsheet.com
http://crowdflower.com

4
5

http://answers.yahoo.com
http://www.wikipedia.org
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

wINTEr 2013

http://www.smartsheet.com http://answers.yahoo.com http://www.crowdflower.com http://www.wikipedia.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013