Crowdsourcing At Aol Case Study Essay
CROWDSOURCING AT AOL CASE STUDY
Crowdsourcing at AOL
Enterprise Information Systems
Nova Southeastern University
February 16, 2014
Abstract America Online (AOL) recently turned to crowdsourcing to help inventory AOL’s immense video library. The large job was broken up into several micro-tasks completed by several different people. This paper will discuss what happened during the crowdsourcing project that took place at AOL.
Crowdsourcing at AOL Case Study
Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. AOL executive Daniel Maloney …show more content…
recently turned to crowdsourcing to help inventory AOL’s immense video library. The job was broken down into micro-tasks and then put on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk web page. Workers were able to view the tasks and if they were interested in performing the task, they were able to perform them. By using the crowdsourcing site, AOL was able to get the job done in a couple of months and at a lower cost than it would have been to hire two temp workers (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013).
Crowdsourcing can be beneficial to companies in many ways. By using crowdsourcing, there is an enormous and talented audience to choose from. The overhead and administration costs are lower, thus, saving companies money. Crowdsourcing also provides companies with the opportunity for fresh, new, and international talent; as oppose to having the same team on the project for many years (Suggett). However, crowdsourcing also poses some ethical concerns such as it can lead to “digital sweatshops” as workers only get paid if their ideas are chosen and receive below average pay. Full-time jobs could be eliminated as well (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013).
Cost cutting caused AOL to crowdsource the inventorying of AOL’s video library.
Reductions of development costs are growing and various forms of development and processes of development have been proposed and invented. Software development project members usually consist of individuals hired by a company or involved in a community such as open source project since software development requires frequent communication. If frequent communication can be saved, a number of individuals in the general public can develop same software by dividing a number of parts of software. Using the crowdsourcing system, the project was able to be completed in about a week (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013).
Crowdsourcing is becoming the “next big thing” by leading companies as they are starting to let combined intelligence form their business strategies (Horn, 2013). Crowdsourcing has a positive impact on AOL, as it not only saved on many costs, but it also was completed quickly. The only drawback was that Daniel Maloney did not know anything about the workers who did the job, and he more than likely had to double check them to make sure they were all doing their work correctly (Pearlson & Saunders,
2013).
Dividing the job into micro-tasks resulted to be an excellent resource for AOL. Crowdsourcing can be a competitive advantage for companies since it implies the concept that two heads are better than one. Having millions of people working together can bring innovation to the table. In fact, crowdsourcing can be looked at as an application of the wisdom of crowd concepts, in which the knowledge and talents of a group of people is leveraged to create content and solve problems (Catone, 2007).
The concept of crowdsourcing is to acquire work that is normal performed by a company’s employee and outsource to a group of people that is not employed by the company (Bloomberg Businessweek, 2014). Outsourcing can be successful for a company if the work is properly done and it is a cost saving for outsourcing the work. Daniel Maloney needed to have a high number of pages process. Therefore, he decided to request help from a micro-task online marketplace such as Crowsourcing.com, CrowdFlower or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This micro-task consists of searching web pages containing video’s and identify the video’s source and location on these pages. The results from outsourcing this micro-task was a success and a cost saving to the company. The process of outsourcing in itself is nothing new. For example, Amazon Mechanical Turk is a web service that provides an on-demand, scalable, human workforce to complete jobs that humans can do better than computers, such as recognizing objects in photographs (Cushing, E., 2013). The success of crowdsourcing is critical. In each task, crowdsourcing companies use quality control systems to ensure accuracy. AOL was thrilled about being able to tap into a large group, process the task in such a short period with accuracy and keep the cost in perspective to hiring two workers. Outsourcing refers to hiring an outside, independent firm to perform a business function that internal employees might otherwise perform (Investopedia.com). Many organizations outsource jobs to specialized services. Typically, organizations view outsourcing as a cost-effective means to expand into new markets. In addition to saving money, outsourcing can save time.
Crowdsourcing can be very efficient in many cases due to the amount of people, which can be involved in a project within such a small timeframe. In this case, AOL’s CEO hit it off the ballpark with the cost saving, time of completion, and other efficiencies attained by crowdsourcing this project. However, the end results of the project, as per the quality of the work performed, was prone to be unverifiable as required by AOL’s standards. By unverifiable, I mean, this project was sourced to many subcontracted employees on a web site which did not substantiate skills and qualifications necessary for a person to get a piece of the project itself. Therefore, many unqualified subcontractors completed a part of the project, which could be not at the standard required by the company. Martin Anderson, VP Engineer for samamsource.com, explains about crowdsourcing projects “Anyone can view it, and potentially work on it—inexperienced teenagers, people lazily completing the task while keeping one eye on their televisions”. In this case, AOL’s efficiencies attained in completing this project, were in fact inefficiencies if in any case the work was completed wastefully. This would mean for AOL to hire a few employees to work on verifying the quality of the work completed by the subcontractors.
References
Anderson, M. (n.d.). The Unknown Workforce: Is Crowdsourcing The Safest Solution for Your Company?. Samasource. Retrieved February 14, 2014, from http://samasource.org/company/blog/the-unknown-workforce-is-crowdsourcing-the-safest-solution-for-your-company/
Bloomberg Businessweek (2014)., Xerox researchers present study on turking and crowdsourcing. Retrieved February 13, 2014 from http://investing.businessweek.com/research/markets/news/article.asp?docKey=600201402121009M2______EUPR_____53b3000001bb80b5_3600-1
Catone, J. (2007). A million heads is better than one. Retrieved from http://readwrite.com/2007/03/22/crowdsourcing_million
Cushing, E. (2013). Amazon Mechanical Turk: The digital sweatshop. Retrieved February 13, 2014 from http://www.utne.com/science-and-technology/amazon-mechanical-turk-zm0z13jfzlin.aspx
Horn, J. (2013). Next big thing. Strategy, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxylocal.library.nova.edu/docview/1439356171?accountid=6579
Investopedia (2014). Retrieved February 13, 2014 from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/outsourcing.asp Pearlson, K., & Saunders, C. (2013). Managing & using information systems. (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Suggett, P. (n.d.). The ups and downs of crowdsourcing. Retrieved from http://advertising.about.com/od/insidetheindustry/a/The-Ups-And-Downs-Of-Crowdsourcing.htm
Crowdsourcing at AOL
Enterprise Information Systems
Nova Southeastern University
February 16, 2014
Abstract America Online (AOL) recently turned to crowdsourcing to help inventory AOL’s immense video library. The large job was broken up into several micro-tasks completed by several different people. This paper will discuss what happened during the crowdsourcing project that took place at AOL.
Crowdsourcing at AOL Case Study
Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. AOL executive Daniel Maloney …show more content…
recently turned to crowdsourcing to help inventory AOL’s immense video library. The job was broken down into micro-tasks and then put on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk web page. Workers were able to view the tasks and if they were interested in performing the task, they were able to perform them. By using the crowdsourcing site, AOL was able to get the job done in a couple of months and at a lower cost than it would have been to hire two temp workers (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013).
Crowdsourcing can be beneficial to companies in many ways. By using crowdsourcing, there is an enormous and talented audience to choose from. The overhead and administration costs are lower, thus, saving companies money. Crowdsourcing also provides companies with the opportunity for fresh, new, and international talent; as oppose to having the same team on the project for many years (Suggett). However, crowdsourcing also poses some ethical concerns such as it can lead to “digital sweatshops” as workers only get paid if their ideas are chosen and receive below average pay. Full-time jobs could be eliminated as well (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013).
Cost cutting caused AOL to crowdsource the inventorying of AOL’s video library.
Reductions of development costs are growing and various forms of development and processes of development have been proposed and invented. Software development project members usually consist of individuals hired by a company or involved in a community such as open source project since software development requires frequent communication. If frequent communication can be saved, a number of individuals in the general public can develop same software by dividing a number of parts of software. Using the crowdsourcing system, the project was able to be completed in about a week (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013).
Crowdsourcing is becoming the “next big thing” by leading companies as they are starting to let combined intelligence form their business strategies (Horn, 2013). Crowdsourcing has a positive impact on AOL, as it not only saved on many costs, but it also was completed quickly. The only drawback was that Daniel Maloney did not know anything about the workers who did the job, and he more than likely had to double check them to make sure they were all doing their work correctly (Pearlson & Saunders,
2013).
Dividing the job into micro-tasks resulted to be an excellent resource for AOL. Crowdsourcing can be a competitive advantage for companies since it implies the concept that two heads are better than one. Having millions of people working together can bring innovation to the table. In fact, crowdsourcing can be looked at as an application of the wisdom of crowd concepts, in which the knowledge and talents of a group of people is leveraged to create content and solve problems (Catone, 2007).
The concept of crowdsourcing is to acquire work that is normal performed by a company’s employee and outsource to a group of people that is not employed by the company (Bloomberg Businessweek, 2014). Outsourcing can be successful for a company if the work is properly done and it is a cost saving for outsourcing the work. Daniel Maloney needed to have a high number of pages process. Therefore, he decided to request help from a micro-task online marketplace such as Crowsourcing.com, CrowdFlower or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This micro-task consists of searching web pages containing video’s and identify the video’s source and location on these pages. The results from outsourcing this micro-task was a success and a cost saving to the company. The process of outsourcing in itself is nothing new. For example, Amazon Mechanical Turk is a web service that provides an on-demand, scalable, human workforce to complete jobs that humans can do better than computers, such as recognizing objects in photographs (Cushing, E., 2013). The success of crowdsourcing is critical. In each task, crowdsourcing companies use quality control systems to ensure accuracy. AOL was thrilled about being able to tap into a large group, process the task in such a short period with accuracy and keep the cost in perspective to hiring two workers. Outsourcing refers to hiring an outside, independent firm to perform a business function that internal employees might otherwise perform (Investopedia.com). Many organizations outsource jobs to specialized services. Typically, organizations view outsourcing as a cost-effective means to expand into new markets. In addition to saving money, outsourcing can save time.
Crowdsourcing can be very efficient in many cases due to the amount of people, which can be involved in a project within such a small timeframe. In this case, AOL’s CEO hit it off the ballpark with the cost saving, time of completion, and other efficiencies attained by crowdsourcing this project. However, the end results of the project, as per the quality of the work performed, was prone to be unverifiable as required by AOL’s standards. By unverifiable, I mean, this project was sourced to many subcontracted employees on a web site which did not substantiate skills and qualifications necessary for a person to get a piece of the project itself. Therefore, many unqualified subcontractors completed a part of the project, which could be not at the standard required by the company. Martin Anderson, VP Engineer for samamsource.com, explains about crowdsourcing projects “Anyone can view it, and potentially work on it—inexperienced teenagers, people lazily completing the task while keeping one eye on their televisions”. In this case, AOL’s efficiencies attained in completing this project, were in fact inefficiencies if in any case the work was completed wastefully. This would mean for AOL to hire a few employees to work on verifying the quality of the work completed by the subcontractors.
References
Anderson, M. (n.d.). The Unknown Workforce: Is Crowdsourcing The Safest Solution for Your Company?. Samasource. Retrieved February 14, 2014, from http://samasource.org/company/blog/the-unknown-workforce-is-crowdsourcing-the-safest-solution-for-your-company/
Bloomberg Businessweek (2014)., Xerox researchers present study on turking and crowdsourcing. Retrieved February 13, 2014 from http://investing.businessweek.com/research/markets/news/article.asp?docKey=600201402121009M2______EUPR_____53b3000001bb80b5_3600-1
Catone, J. (2007). A million heads is better than one. Retrieved from http://readwrite.com/2007/03/22/crowdsourcing_million
Cushing, E. (2013). Amazon Mechanical Turk: The digital sweatshop. Retrieved February 13, 2014 from http://www.utne.com/science-and-technology/amazon-mechanical-turk-zm0z13jfzlin.aspx
Horn, J. (2013). Next big thing. Strategy, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxylocal.library.nova.edu/docview/1439356171?accountid=6579
Investopedia (2014). Retrieved February 13, 2014 from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/outsourcing.asp Pearlson, K., & Saunders, C. (2013). Managing & using information systems. (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Suggett, P. (n.d.). The ups and downs of crowdsourcing. Retrieved from http://advertising.about.com/od/insidetheindustry/a/The-Ups-And-Downs-Of-Crowdsourcing.htm