Crowd labor is outsourced information work that can be provisioned automatically. It’s ideally, inexpensive, on demand, and elastic. Platforms providing such services are on the rise in 2012, promising customers lower labor costs in the short term and higher-quality output in the long term. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Amanda Palmer, an alt rock fan favorite who’s worked Kickstarter and social media masterfully in her career, may have mis-stepped when she posted a plea for free musicians to back up her band in its current tour. Or else it was a publicity stunt. Read more »
99designs’ use of Amazon services to run its crowd-sourcing site is seen as a model for how small companies can leverage cloud services. The company’s site claims to handle hundreds of thousands of unique visitors and tens of millions of pageviews monthly. Read more »
Snazzy logos aren’t just for corporations anymore. Occupy.com, the soon-to-be-launched website for the international Occupy protest movement, has turned to crowdsourced design website 99Designs to find a logo. The “Occupy 99Designs” design contest has garnered nearly 400 entries in its first few hours online. Read more »
Crowdsourcing startup 99designs recently received $35 million in venture capital and is currently advertising six positions in its Melbourne and San Francisco offices. The business has a strong culture and a flat structure. How does the company plan to manage expansion without compromising collaboration or culture? Read more »
99Designs acquired a devoted customer base, logged millions in annual revenue, and achieved profitable operations without taking on a dime of venture capital. I sat down with employee number one and CTO Lachlan Donald to find out how the company bootstrapped its way to profitability. Read more »
We’ve written before about software bundles, which have become increasingly popular. Similarly, AppSumo has put together a bundle of SaaS products that will appeal to “lean startups,” timed to coincide with the SxSW Interactive event that has just started in Austin, TX. Read more »
