Many companies today are doing whatever they can to save money, in order to make sure that their businesses are as profitable as possible. Companies are known for outsourcing jobs to other countries where labor is cheaper. I actually know someone who had to go to India to train her replacement, crazy right. The question is has crowdsourcing, become a new area of outsourcing?

It sounds like if you are in the field of graphic design and or photography, you have a lot of cheap competition. They may not offer the quality that you do, but it comes close and doesn’t cost nearly as much. What baffles my mind is that there are people who are out their “freelancing” and charging so little for their talents. Is it out of desperation to just earn some cash, or possibly a hobby that people have discovered can make them money?

Whatever your opinion is on crowdsourcing it seems to me that individuals in the “arts” industry need to reevaluate their current situation.

References:

"Is Crowdsourcing Evil? The Design Community Weighs In | Epicenter | Wired.com"

"YouTube - Jeff Howe - Crowdsourcing"

The Social Graph

Society today has become so engulfed in the internet and posting information online for everyone to view, it has become like a huge bank of knowledge that people can just tap into whenever they want.

Because of this wealth of information you can research anything and then use that information to create new information. All it takes is the willingness to find the answers to your questions. Since knowledge can now be so easily gained I believe that people can become more educated on a variety of topics. It is possible now to use data posted by someone else online to delve even further into a topic and expand upon it, possibly in a direction never thought of by the initial person who exposed the information to the web.

As a society we want our news and we want it know and fast. Forums like Ignite can provide us with that. It is incredible to think that people all over the world can view that video and be able to learn the same information at the same time. It goes to show that networks are everywhere, and we are a society that thrives on sharing knowledge to our networks and others out there who are interested in the same information.

Facebook is another aspect that deals with sharing a wealth of information and keeping people updated on what is going on it the world. All facebook users have seen or posted news that they want their peers and others to view. Facebook updates sometimes even deal with responding to tragedy and together people raise awareness quickly about an important event. The internet and Web 2.0 is rapidly changing how many people receive their news and the speed at which is comes.

"Improving your ability to Share and Connect (Mark Zuckerburg on the Facebook Blog)"

"YouTube - Visualizing the U.S. Senate by Social Graph - Andrew Odewahn"

My First Blog Post

I am a student at American University studying Information Technology and Entrepreneurship. This blog was created to be a learning environment to communicate with my peers, for educational purposes. It is being used for a class called Social Networking, Social Media and Web 2.0.

"On my honor, all posts on this Blog are my own."