On a recent post, one of you asked about crowdsourcing. Definitely ask when I use a word that's new to you. I created a new tab on my blog called Definitions to describe words I use regularly. I know that I need to make them more specific.

Crowdsourcing is a relatively new term. I've seen it used two ways. The way I usually use it is for gathering information across a network. ReadWriteWeb has the other: Your Guide to the Crowdsourced Workforce

Crowdsourcing, a term coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 issue of Wired magazine, is a model of labor that has been fully embraced on the Internet over the past couple of years. Crowdsourcing takes tasks traditionally done by a single person or small groups of people, and farms them out to a global workforce. The large-scale committee approach is powerful because it leans on the concept of the "wisdom of crowds" (to a certain extent) which says basically that the more input, the better the output.

When I was doing some research for this post I found some interesting examples of crowdsourcing! The Library of Congress is using Flickr to crowdsource & tag thousands of photos. And it was announced that Facebook was going to crowdsource the site translation into Chinese.

You can do your own crowdsourcing too! It's as easy as asking your network. Try to make your question as specific as possible but broad enough to elicit the variety of responses you're looking for. Then choose a network to ask it in.

• ping.fm works well to ask questions across my whole set of social networks. It's interesting because I get different answers.
• LinkedIn question feature - this worked exceptionally well! I had a question that was fairly specific & received a nice range of answers.
• Plurk offers a nice format for gathering info (click on the link to see the example).
  • Amber Naslund had writer's blog & gathered ideas from us. Our brainstorming helped her get moving. Isn't that what friends are for?!
  • 'plurkshops' are great examples
  • Darren Rowse, Problogger is effectively using it to gain ideas
  • Mack Collier comments on how it can be used for business

What are your examples of crowdsourcing?