We live in a time where creators who have great ideas can make them real using new ways of communicating their efforts to wide audience (Kim, 2013). One of these new ways is crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.
The two examples I looked at were Indiegogo & 99designs. Below I will include some strenghts and weaknesses of both sites.
Indiegogo strengths
wide and proactive audience of possible donors that is easily accessible
The platform is offered for anybody – individuals, firms, non-profit organizations
The site gives the opportunity to test the marketability of the project
Indiegogo weaknesses
The site does not guarantee any profit
Website asks for 9% of the raised money, which is a bit more than other sites
Possibility that somebody will eventually copy somebodies idea so it loses the originality
99designs Strengths
Thousands of people who are willing to donate their time to create designs (Whitla, 2009)
The designers have the opportunity to get paid for their design if it is chosen
Small companies or people with lower budget can get professional designs for lower prices
The platform offers the designers a gateway to new knowledge, improvement of skills and networking possibilities
99designs Weaknesses
possibility of not liking any submitted designs
Also, not all the designers will get paid
problems with the copyright and ownership of the designs, which should be handled beforehand (Whitla, 2009)
So when looking for some information on Open Source Projects, I came accross this article that discusses 10 best projects that are worth joining in. The talk about projects such as Firefox, Ubuntu, Apache or Python – we all heard off, but also about other interesting ones that are worth checking out.
As they say in the article, it is a great opportunity for people to share their knowledge and as a group improve and build something.
As we could see in this weeks readings, “[…] firms increasingly rely on “network” and “viral” marketing strategies” (Hill et al. 2006, Manchanda et al. 2008, Nam et al. 2010, Retrieved from Aral, & Walker, 2011) in order to drive the product adoption and sales. So basically, the attention is paid on how to make products viral using marketing strategies and campaigns instead of how to design products that can turn themselves viral (Aral, & Walker, 2011). So I was thinking of a good example of a product that went viral without using any marketing and what came to my mind was Minecraft.
Probably most of you heard or even played Minecraft, but for those who don’t know, it is a sandbox indie game that has its unique look of everything being boxy and sharp. It is not one of those high-profile games with sick graphics and real-life feeling to them. So how is it possible that a game that is not made to be perfect and not made to be fully marketed has earned its huge worldwide success?
While trying to answer this question, I came across a couple interesting articles (Minecraft, the worlds most successful casual game, Why Minecraft is so popular) which all showed some different aspects of the game that made it a blockbuster. However, the one that interested me the most was the fact, that word-of-mouth was one of the factors that facilitated the popularity of the game. So how is it possible that the game became so successful having no advertising/marketing budget, using only word-of mouth? Well I do not think this strategy from the side of the company was on purpose. Minecraft community is fairly tight, anybody can play the game, old/young, gamers/non-gamers. Thus, the whole platform is fueled by people, their engagement, so word-of mouth becomes something natural.
It is only to be discovered why exactly this works. What do you think? Do you know of any other platforms that use this strategy (on purpose or not)?
The other day I was browsing around Facebook, checking on some old friends what they have been up to and I came across this video that was shared by one of them through 9gag called “Forget Samsung and Apple. This is the future…” My first reaction when I read the title was something like “Chyeah, sure… Like you know what you are talking about!” I honestly thought it was another attempt of Nokia, or any other long forgotten phone manufacturer for that matter, to get to the spotlight of the phone industry by making a viral video. Despite my initial skepticism, I decided to watch the video and see what they had to offer.
So after watching this I was astonished. A customizable phone which will not only be all you want but will also attempt to save the world? Amazing, finally, right? But, honestly, this was not really the main point that caught my attention. To my academically trained brain (that´s how I like to call it when I find the terms to be more interesting than the content) the focus point of this video was the amazing combination of crowdsourcing, crowdspeaking and usage of social media in the attempt to launch a new mobile phone.
I have to say, in a sense it reminded me of the Threadless case. Phoneblocks seems to be the same concept built on the community, offering a platform to be creative and to gain a great product from it. However, with a slight variation of the industry, from apparel to electronics. Phoneblocks, if successful, will give lot of opportunities to creative and handy people around the world who are interested in technology and have the interest in building their own blocks. Crowdsourcing 101. We all gain. We could have great blocks we could use on our phones and the creators (as I assume) would gain a slight profit from this.
But for all this to be possible to happen, the whole idea would have to be realized. How, you ask me? As they said in the video, they were using crowdspeaking to raise the buzz and interest in potential investors, companies, designers, people. All this by using social media and people from all over the world who would share their content all at the same time. What is the idea behind this? Well people sharing the same content at the same time would flood the internet with Phoneblocks and nobody would be able to run away from it. People would get suddenly interested and would want to find more about it. Eventually, it would reach the companies and people who can make a difference not only by sponsoring but also by offering ideas and technological knowledge to make this idea happen. But for all this, a huge effort from the broad public would be needed. A crowd, community that desired to change the phone industry and make it what they want. I think it is a brilliant idea with the use of social media to start strong with this project.
Only future will show how this project will evolve and if, in real, the social media boom will be successful start of the journey of Phoneblock. But, after seeing the success of their viral video (more than 15 million views in 2 weeks) I am fairly positive about the outcome and can´t wait to see how this will evolve.
Social Media and Social Networks 