Techdirt Insight Community's Timothy Lee takes issue with the idea that crowdsourcing has jumped the shark. It's important for social media types, because we're constantly asked to duplicate the efforts of other people, but only after they've been successful and experienced wild viral success (because nothing inspires a customer like duplication).
Yes, there are formulas, but social media isn't about tricking customers, it's about listening to them. It isn't crowdsourcing that's jumped the shark, it's lazy executives and lazy ad agencies who think only of how to extract value from the internet with as little effort as possible, and then wonder why they can't make this whole "social media" thing work.
We talk about metrics, but the truth is many companies don't want to measure their online reputation. They don't want to hear from their customers, because if they did, they'd spend all day handling complaints that wouldn't be fixed.
Social media isn't for everyone. It's not that it couldn't be, it's that social media is simply people trading information. If you don't want people sharing information, giving it a label that takes up 30% of the columns at AdAge isn't going to solve your problem.
Over to Timothy:
I think the problem here is the way the question is being framed. If a company views crowdsourcing as just a one-off opportunity to get some free labor out of its customers, then obviously customers are going to get tired of it. But that's the wrong way to look at it. What crowdsourcing is about, ultimately, is improving communications with your customers, and among the customers themselves. Asking your customers to become more involved in various aspects of your business -- offering product advice to one another, providing feedback on new products, or offering ideas about advertising strategies -- increases customer loyalty by demonstrating that your company is actually engaged with its customers and responsive to their concerns.
"your company is actually engaged with its customers and responsive to their concerns." If that's your company, or your client, then you have to have a platform online to help people pitch your product. Good companies and good brands sell themselves is a catchphrase. What happens when companies learn to get out of the way of their customer evangelists, and spend their time and money on improving their product and response?
