Crowdsourcing-breaking up the whole into parts

What we have learnt from the introduction of Prof. Rosanna during the last two weeks helps us to set up a holistic overview of social media and social networking. In addition to that, there were a variety of examples of social tasks and media from China mainland or foreign countries shared by Prof. Rosanna and participants, which left an impressive comprehension on social networking.

Although most of youngsters have joined in social networking and refresh Facebook or Twitter every day, the social technology and knowledge which we get is limited because of the not long history of social networking. As one of them, I just focused on social websites and media before.  However, it is a narrow definition about social networking which also involve social tasks such as crowdsourcing. As almost of all students, I have never heard about it before, but we cannot deny we all encounter even use it when surfing the Internet. Simply speaking, crowdsourcing means posing a problem to a crowd of users that is impractical to solve through computation but is possible through human analysis. Then Prof. Rosanna gave us plenty of examples of crowdsourcing which maybe not leave an impressive comprehension because they are all foreign websites and never used before. However, as I know, there is some social networking similar to them in China mainland.

For example, the BurdaStyle is a website which could help you choose cloth and analysis which one is more fashionable. On the contrary, Melishuo and Mogujie are not strange for students from China mainland. Though the platform, there are large number of fashionistas sharing their thoughts, shopping experience and matching methods.

Another example will be like this, .Dopplr social site allows members to share their upcoming travel destinations, and BrightKite helps people discover each other based on geolocation through cellphones. Actually, Momo and Weixin also have similar functions, and are widely used in transportation. It is a common sight that taxi drivers select proper passengers around though geolocation measurement. It is convenient and efficient for both drivers and passengers.

However, there is still one kind of social networking which may not be popular as others and is not mentioned in the lecture. It is a platform for original singers. The original singers might have not enough money to publish recording and their works are easy to copy by other big record companies. This websites could protect their copyright; meanwhile, their works should be made into stocks. Listeners could buy what they like to support their idols and all of them could profit when the song is popular.

Generally speaking, crowdsourcing gives us some convenience and pleasure undoubtedly, but the problems which are exciting could be solved by crowdsourcing in daily life. Therefore, we would hold a considerate attitude to explore and discover social networking.