Section 1: Analysis
AOL’s executive, Daniel Maloney, used crowdsourcing method to get help inventorying AOL’s video library through Mechanical Turk. Within 2 months project got completed and cost was similar if he would have hired 2 temp workers. He knew little about who did the work and he had to make sure about the quality of the work.
Section 2: Summary of Discussion Questions
1. Yes. Crowdsourcing as used by AOL is a form of outsourcing. Instead of completing the project internally in the company, he divided the task and gave it to temporary workers. It matches with outsourcing aspect. Only difference is that it is outsourced to large group of people.
2. Maloney might have analyzed the project and must have decided based on the benefits and risk involved with crowdsourcing type of outsourcing model. He might have been very careful while selecting worker for inventorying task. He might have selected stay-at-home parents or college students with spare time particularly to perform this task. He must have selected eligible and skilled worker to perform this task. He must have checked the quality of work once performed by the worker. He must have divided the work in such a way that each piece of the task is not dependent on other task. He must have decided about payment such that it becomes attractive to the workers and also not costly for the company.
3. When deciding whether to crowd source, one should analyze the project and make strategy accordingly. Part of the business should be possible to divide into small parts so they can be distributed wisely. Divided pieces should not be interdepended so that each task can be performed independently. Cost of crowdsourcing should be