Links from the Week

I'm just rolling in from an open jaw that took me from Austin to Boston and back. (I went to SXSW to moderate a panel and read from my book, then to the Berkman Center for a talk. More on these later.) What did I miss? To judge by my tweetdeck alerts, quite a lot. Here are some highlights, in no particular order:

Crowdsourcing Schadenfreude
A few days after sitting on my SXSW panel the Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang published an unfortunate post about Mzinga, one of the companies he follows. Within he reported that he'd been hearing rumors of financial difficulties at the company, and advised his clients to "stall any additional movement till they brief me next Monday" (italics his). Without recounting the resulting shit storm (Which you can read about here and here), I would like to pass censure on the (purported) use of crowdsourcing to determine whether Forrester should give Owyang the ax. Basically, a social media consultant asked his readers to vote on Owyang's fate. A) This is only crowdsourcing if Forrester were to base a decision on it (which they surely won't); B) it gives form to the sort of anonymous trollery that all is social media's least attractive feature.

Crowdsourcing Congress
I've been ignoring the rise of crowdsourcing in governance for the excellent reason that I'd have to drop my day job in order to due the subject justice. But that doesn't mean I've been lurking. Guest blogging at O'Reilly, Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose brought Gov 2.0 one step closer to fruition by asking the crowd how Congressional Websites might best take advantage of, well, crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing Recycling
Brilliant, common-sense use of community to disseminate recession-era home ec.

Army of ... Many?
Tantalizing, right? Tune in later when I actually have time to complete a friggin' blog post.

Comments

[Rich Becker]

Jeff,

You are absolutely right to pass censure on the (purported) use of crowdsourcing to determine whether Forrester should give Owyang the ax. Besides being yet another example of social media abuse, they didn't even think to limit the vote to one per person.

It's pretty easy to guess where angry Mzinga employees will be doing for days.

All the best,
Rich

[watzabatza]

I think it's not evil though! It depends on how you interpret. Good Day!

[kemp]

Nice article but a little lacking on meat and potatoes info on crowdsourcing.

Cloud sourced this blog post about crowd sourcing and its uses. Check it out.

http://kempedmonds.com

[A Speed Reader]

Good sharing. I like the quality of your post.

[Travel Insurance Seniors]

This is only crowdsourcing if Forrester were to base a decision on it!

[evden eve nakliyat]

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[kraloyun]

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[seo]

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