Tracing the Origins of "Crowdsourcing"

Back in June 2006, Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, coined the term "crowdsoucring" to describe how the spread of technology and the Internet were giving amateur content producers greater power in the marketplace.  As he stated in the influential article, "...smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn't always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It's not outsourcing; it's crowdsourcing."

After writing the article, Howe began his own blog to promote an open discussion about the impacts of this phenomenon.  And this past summer he further fleshed out these ideas in his highly-praised book, Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. (With a nod to the modern day effects on book publishing, I've noticed that it has its own video trailer on YouTube.)

We are so pleased that Jeff Howe will be speak during the first day of the BRITE '09 conference, as part of a theme of "Crowdsourcing, Tribes, and Online Communities."

While reading The New York Times this past weekend, I saw that William Safire highlighted the term and its interesting origins in his "On Language" column noting that, "Last week, the word passed the million-hits mark on Google."  Safire describes his own experience of crowdsourcing for several decades via the "Phrasedick Brigade" that sometimes sources word origins for his column. 

Looking back even further to another influential journalist, Herodotus notes in his History of the Persian Wars the following Babylonian custom, "They have no physicians, but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease themselves or have known anyone who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them; and no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment is."

Clearly, the eagerness of the crowd to participate in useful content development has always been there.  Now the tools exist to allow this urge to make a measurable market impact.