The death of Crowdsourcing? Dun, dun, dun...

It's interesting.

For as long as I can remember whether it was my high school guidance counselor helping me write essays for college applications, or my architecture professors showing me the ins and outs of putting together my design portfolio, there was always that conversation of how to stand out from the crowd.

Not to mention the thousands of business books on on how to identify your unique selling proposition (a term I really, really, dislike by the way) on what sets your company apart from the rest of the competition/crowd. 

But during the course of the last 5 or 6 years entrepreneurs and companies are experimenting and trying their hands at tapping into the "masses" and building their business models around the new idea of crowdsourcing - a term coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article "The Rise of Crowdsourcing".

The idea rocks in theory - outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call - but when you start to deconstruct it, from its name to what it does/aims to do, it gets problematic on numerous levels.

About a month ago me and my business partner sat down with my good friend Peter LaMotte, who is the Executive Vice President of Genius Rocket, a crowd-source driven creative agency here in the DC area, to talk shop. We were discussing a business partnership and talking about community, the digital landscape and innovation. In addition to a slew of other conversation topics, we came to an agreement that "crowdsourcing" as a word, just doesn't cut it anymore.

Matter of fact Genius Rocket and 99Designs (another early player in the crowdsourcing game) have actually launched a new collaborative initiative that will crowdsource a new name for crowdsourcing  - (duuude...rock on!)

Here's a blurb from their Project: Rename Crowdsourcing page:

"The term 'crowdsourcing' has become such a buzzword that it has lost meaning on both ends of the equation. This makes it misunderstood by businesses new to the model. It's also used far too generally and ambiguously by those who understand crowdsourcing culture. We work with the crowd everyday, so we're walking the walk by tapping collaborative creative geniuses around the world to help us redefine what we do."

Additionally another close colleague of mine, Jeremy Epstein, opens up in his blog post, Remember: Community trumps Crowd:

Who do you trust more?

A group of strangers in a train station?

Or, people who were in your (insert college activity here)?

That’s the difference, in Thomas Myer’s excellent piece, between community-sourcing and crowd-sourcing. 

Jeremy is all about community, just as we are.

Now there are a ton of folks who have never heard of this term, so this does not apply to them. But if you are touting yourself as an early adopter and industry leader, and your brand is tied to this idea. . .now I'm not saying to drop it altogether but you may want to think about how crowdsourcing, and what it's about, becomes sustainable. Now if it is, the question becomes: how do you stand out from the crowd when you are the crowd?