Just How Successful is Crowd Sourcing?

Although there are many positives and negatives in regard to crowd sourcing, what businesses and individuals might be most interested in is finding out is just how successful this idea is.

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of crowd sourcing is stated as "to utilize (labor, information, etc.) contributed by the general public to (a project), often via the Internet and without compensation." In some cases,  People rely on information from individuals that perhaps they have never even met before (such as Yahoo Answers), but in other cases, such as Facebook, people seek to either get an opinion or gain more knowledge from friends they may know very well. In instances such as asking questions just to hear opinions from others, success is not an issue. However, in many cases a wrong answer can make all the difference. For example, one form of crowd sourcing, known as crowd voting, occurs when websites gather views and opinions from individuals on a certain topic. Iowa Electronic Market, a prediction market that gathers crowds' views on politics, relies on factual information from their participants so that the Market can guarantee accuracy by forcing participants to buy and sell contracts based on the political options. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

Another example of when success really counts in a business is seen in companies that acquire ideas and possible commercial ads from individuals with artistic abilities or knowledge. This occurred when L'Oreal chose a five minute ad segment sent in by an individual which cost them $1,000 to run as opposed to brainstorming the idea themselves and paying $164,200. In this case, L'Oreal was extremely successful in they way chose to carry out their ad-focused campaign strategy. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-09-24/crowdsourcing