The Complete Idiot's Guide to Crowdsourcing

Book excerpt: Tap into the global talent pool Crowdsourcing leverages such social networking tools as Facebook and Twitter to tap into the power of many people to distribute one's work load or gain input. Aliza Sherman, crowdsourcing innovator, has helped her clients harness the incredible power of "crowd-think" and "crowd-do" to achieve goals as diverse as designing new products to test-marketing services to fundraising. In this guide, she explains the theory and practice of crowdsourcing and actually shows readers how to use it. • A practical, prescriptive guide for those who want to put the ideas in such books as The Wisdom of Crowds and Here Comes Everybody into action. • Step-by-step instructions. • Insightful anecdotes from the world of crowdsourcing.