Companies such as Facebook, Google, and Foursquare regularly host events that give developers the keys to the code and let them carve it up, all in hopes of producing innovative new applications for the platform. At Foursquare's February hackathon, for example, 150 developers mixed and mingled with the company's engineers and got their hands dirty with the API. The results, according to Foursquare's blog: 25 pizza and 300 cups of coffee consumed, 15 hours of coding, and 39 new apps. The winner? The Dealio, who turned a suggestion from a Foursquare forum into an app that enables users to leave private messages for friends when they check in at a venue.
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We looked at 10 applications of the crowdsourcing concept for business. They cover the broad disciplines of marketing, advertising, product development, customer service, public relations, human resources, outsourcing, project management, Web development, coding, social media, and quality assurance. In some cases, crowdsourcing is the business. Some companies, such as Netflix, have put a mighty fine price tag on their crowdsourced efforts. Others, like Dell and Starbucks, utilize the concept on a continuous basis to solicit new ideas for how they can push their businesses forward. And lest the brainstormers think they're putting suggestions into an empty void, the companies back up the proposition, publishing stats and updates when and how the best ideas are implemented.
