Crowdsourcing: the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. Put in laymen's terms, it's the idea of taking a job you need done and making it available for anyone who wants to just show up and do it - preferably for free (or for as little as a good pat on the back and maybe some other recognition).

The king of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia. They've built their huge online encyclopedia by letting anyone and everyone write the entries and they've managed to avoid paying for it. But Robert Scroble (blog: Scrobleiaer) has a blog post last week about the future of crowdsourcing. He suggests that free crowdsourcing could be on the way out thanks to Dave Ingram, the CEO of Brownbook.net. Ingram is paying the crowd to review businesses. There's even an entrepreneurial aspect to it.

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