"Welcome to the age of [crowdsourcing]. Just as distributed computing projects like UC Berkeley's SETI@home have tapped the unused processing power of millions of individual computers, so distributed labor networks are using the Internet to exploit the spare processing power of millions of human brains".
- from Wired Magazine, "The Rise of Crowdsourcing", pages 177-183, June 2006
As I was reading my latest Wired magazine, I was really struck by this article. The Internet has revolutionized business in so many ways, but "crowdsourcing" may be the most revolutionary application to date. Think of Wikipedia, Linux, eBay, YouTube, Google's ads, and the many other businesses that have been created by connecting the power of the crowd via the Internet.
So how does crowdsourcing apply to eCommerce? Well, it is leading to the creation of entirely new businesses. For example, look at Threadless.com. It is on track to earn more than $20 million in revenue this year by crowdsourcing designs for t-shirts. They sell one-of-a-kind shirts that are vetted by the crowd as the best. You can see something similar happening on Zazzle, which has a more professional feel (not as much of a MySpace community feel as Threadless.com). In addition to t-shirts, Zazzle lets you apply the crowdsourced designs on posters, mugs, postage, and cards. Although you could dismiss these businesses as too niche or fringe to matter, it would be a mistake to do so. They are revolutionizing merchandising by crowdsourcing.
