Crowdsourcing At Its Best
12 Jun, 2008
Views: 343
Lately I’ve found myself spending way too much time over at crowdSPRING one of those uppety startups that no real person has heard about but everyone else wants to be a part of. Seriously though, it’s a great place for creative people and for people who need to have things created.
crowdSPRING is, quote, “a marketplace for creative services”. A bit like Guru or Élance then, you say? Well, yes. And, not at all. Here’s how crowdSPRING is different: at normal design marketplaces, like the aforementioned, buyers post jobs and watch creatives climb over each other to try and win the contract. Then the real job starts. The buyer can’t be guaranteed that the creative actually will come up with something useful. And at some of these marketplaces, the creative might end up toiling many hours to complete a project, only to discover that the buyer doesn’t want to pay for the work (yep, happens). At crowdSPRING however, a buyer posts his-her project (hopefully eloquently described), sets a reasonable project runtime, and sits back and watches as interested creatives submit real design proposals. Yep, real. And at the end of the project runtime, the buyer chooses the proposal that he-she likes the best. Work done (with some tweaks during runtime or after the pick, or both); the money is guaranteed upfront; buyer and awarded creative are happy. Yay!
I know this because I have already been fortunate to win more than one project. But more about that in a separate post.
crowdSPRING is an infant yet, only one month 100 days old in the eyes of the public, so naturally there are teething problems, and the community we’re trying to build over there is slow in forming. But it’s fun, it’s inspirational, it’s aggravating, it’s competitive, it’s rewarding. Hop on over and see for yourself.
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Comments on “Crowdsourcing At Its Best”
1Ross said (12 Jun, 2008):
Hi Fred - and thanks so much for writing about crowdspring. We're very fortunate to have friends like you around the world helping us build a very special community. And you are absolutely right - it is fun, inspirational, aggravating, competitive and rewarding. All of those things, all at once. We think we have a huge opportunity to help change the creative services marketplace - to revolutionize how creative services are bought and sold, and to give voice to the millions of creatives around the world who are quite good at creating but don't have opportunity to create. We are very proud to work with buyers and creatives, shoulder to shoulder, to meet that challenge.
Tack så mycket,
Ross
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