Futurelab directed me to a great presentation of Tara Hunt about happiness. The presentation captures what’s important in the relationship between companies and customers very effectively. Take some time to go from theories by Adam Smith and Abraham Maslow all the way to happiness producing companies like Moleskine, Zappos, Twitter and Wordpress.

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If you ask me: Kluster is on the right track. The latest addition to the Kluster.com family of crowdsourced businesses is called Namethis.com. For anyone in need of inspiration and market tested name ideas for products or companies: namethis is the cure.

Just like the other Kluster site knewsroom, you get paid based upon your influence in each project. You ‘buy’ a stake in the suggestions you like. Coming up with a new name automatically gives you a high stake in that idea. The stakeholders of the three winning ideas get paid cash for their input. In this way the mechanisms behind prediction markets are used to test the names and the crowd is motivated to be active.

The crowd is active indeed! Techcrunch placed a namethis request for a project on their site called ‘TechCrunch Elevator Pitches’. Although TechCrunch stated on their site that they were not going to change the name some 185 ideas were posted and judged by the crowd. Unlike kluster.com the interface is very simple and inviting. Participation is very easy and even fun.

High hopes for NameThis! I wonder if Kluster will use their own site for their next spinoffs…

Jaap Bloem and Eelke Dekker made a great report for mediapartner Frankwatching on our event SocialStrategyTalk. It captures the atmosphere, topics and diversity of the audience very well. Non-Dutchies will not understand the short interview with Menno Bouwes who talks about the project he manages at the ministry of Justice so I’ll explain:
The project is about involving the crowd in the proces of making laws. This is typically not something you want to ‘democratize’ too much, so the crowd is mainly used to give input in the early phases of making laws. Menno’s speach taught us that it takes a lot of effort to do this right, but that it increases the overall quality because of richer and more diverse input.

The video takes less than 7 minutes.

Last thursday our event SocialStrategyTalk kicked off with a great evening about Crowdsourcing. We had Jeff Howe coming over from New York who delivered a great speech about his soon to be published book. What was great about Jeff’s speach were the many stories he told us about crowdsourcing examples through which the general laws of crowdsourcing emerged. “Ask not what communities can do for you, ask what you can do for the community. The rest will follow…”.

Furthermore Menno Bouwes, a high placed government official in the Ministry of Justice provided us with a great case about crowdsourcing legislation. Menno explained us how the crowd brings more perspectives in the early phases of making laws. It was made clear that crowdsourcing will not make any jobs redundant. Moreover it will enrich decision making and improve the overall quality of laws.

The next edition of SocialStrategyTalk will take place September 4th in Amsterdam and will be about “listening to communities”. Be part of the SST community and sign up via meetup.

More photo’s on Flickr.

I just read on TechCrunch that Cambrian House is sold for an amount far below the investments the company received. This is just a link to the article for newsjunkies and my promise to you to figure out what to make of this…

What’s clear already is that it would be a shame if such an energetic company would die. So I’m very interested in the new owner and his strategy with the community…

I’ll be back…

Jeff Howe, the inventor of crowdsourcing, calls upon the crowds to comment on his soon-to-be-published book: Crowdsourcing. After crowdsourcing the artwork for the cover of the British version of his book he now searches for the intelectual improvements that the crowds have to offer.

Here are the chapters that need your unsalted critique, deep insights and experience:
Chapter Two: The Rise of the Amateur 
Chapter Two: Rise of the Amateur, Continued
Chapter 3: From So Simple a Beginning
Chapter 3: From So Simple a Beginning, Continued
Chapter 4—Faster, Cheaper, Smarter, Easier: Democratizing the Means of Production
Chapter 4: Faster, Cheaper, Smarter, Easier, continued.
The End of Chapter 4: Faster, Cheaper, Smarter, Easier
Chapter 5: The Rise and Fall of the Firm: Turning Community Into Commerce
Chapter 5: The Rise and Fall of the Firm, Cont.
Chapter 6: The Most Universal Quality—Why Diversity Trumps Ability

See Jeff Howe in action and give him your feedback face-to-face on our event in Amsterdam, May 22nd: SocialStrategyTalk. (subscribe via meetup).

Microsoft thinks engagement is more important than clicks and I can’t agree more. Although Microsoft is not very clear on what they mean by engagement they share they acknowledge that the age of advertising as we know it is over and we are moving steadily into the age of engagement.

Why is this relevant to a blog about Crowdsourcing? (We’ve even made it a category). I believe Crowdsourcing is a means for engagement and is fueled by the same trends. To lean on my MscBA for explaining this a bit: Treacy and Wiersema (1993) modified Michael Porters generic strategies into three “value disciplines: Cost Leadership, Product Leadership, and Customer Intimacy. Cost leadership is harder than ever due to globalization. Moreover product leadership is more expensive than ever: R&D cost are increasing (ROI decreasing).

What is left is Customer Intimacy: focussing on user groups to meet their needs better. This strategy is very much technology-driven. On the one hand companies have the ability to produce taylor-made products (think Lego and Ponoko). On the other hand customers are more able than ever to create their own designs with software and let companies know what they want with social software. Crowdsourcing is all about these two groups joining forces in an intimate relationship.

The following presentation by David Armano is an inspiring presentation about this topic from another angle.

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ABN Amro started offering support for private loans. The bank is part of Fortis, the third largest bank in the world.

The bank takes a different angle than do crowdfunding/p2p loan sites, like zopa, prosper, the Dutch boober and many others. The site offers free loan contracts, a calculation tool for redemption schemes and offers paid legal services.

I think the service is interesting; it will definitely bring value to people that want to loan money to privately. But it will not threaten the existing p2p players. The essence of p2p funding is that not just financial and commercial motives are important. Moreover the emotional satisfaction that you get from helping others financially is important.

When you have some money left you can put it on an account with high interest, or you can really help someone financing his marriage, study or that car he is so passionate about.

In my opinion big banks need to be looking on for the right way to fence off the threat posed by p2p…

May 22nd will be the day our event SocialStrategyTalk kicks off with no one less than Jeff Howe: the inventor of Crowdsourcing.

SocialStrategyTalk will be a recurring event about organizations that are connecting to the people around and within them. The event will be the offline part of a discussion amongst people that are involved with the social strategies of their organizations. A strategic approach to the socialenterprise is needed, SST aims to be a place where people can be inspired, informed and connected to other people facing similar challenges.

The theme of the first meeting is “Crowdsourcing” and we have two great speakers to discuss it.

Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. In June of 2006 he published “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” in Wired. He has continued to cover the phenomenon in his blog, crowdsourcing.com, and is currently writing a book on the subject for Crown Books to be published in July 2008. The Crowdsourcing trend seems to be getting an increasing amount of attention as it touches on many developments in a broad array of industries. We are proud to have Jeff coming over to Amsterdam!

Menno Bouwes works at the ministry of Justice of the Netherlands and is involved in a project in which Legislation is being crowdsourced. Menno will tell us the ins and outs of the project and share his insights and learnings. We are very enthusiastic about Menno’s appearance at SST because it will give us a hands-on example of crowdsourcing showing the broad potential for the application of the trend.

SocialStrategyTalk will take place May 22nd in Amsterdam at the WesterUnie (Westergasfabriek, directions here). The program starts at 15:30. SocialTalk (without the strategy) can start 19:00. Check the site for more info and subscribe via Meetup.

Subscribe to SocialStrategyTalk for free via Meetup.Com

SocialStrategyTalk is a co-production of CreativeCrowds and ViNT.

A new report by Forrester teaches that companies’ budgets for web2.0 technologies will radically increase over the next five years. “This increase will include more spending on social networking tools, mashups, and RSS, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013″ (source).

An interesting finding in the report is that external Web 2.0 expenditure will surpass internal expenditure in 2009, and, by 2013, will dwarf internal spending by a billion dollars. I think this is trend is moving simultaneously with the notion within companies that there is a lot to gain outside of their companies. It is exactly this notion that will drive the adoption of new crowdsourcing applications as well.

One of the interesting explanations for the trend is that a lot of baby boomers will start to retire in the coming years, creating more room for younger people who are far more at ease with new technologies. Read readwriteweb for good coverage of the report.