Journalism professor C.W. Anderson argues in a new book about the decline of traditional media outlets in Philadelphia that one of the main stumbling blocks in adapting to a digital future has been traditional journalistic culture. Read more at paidContent »
Zaarly, a peer-to-peer marketplace, has opened its new Storefronts feature in New York, giving creative local residents a chance to boost growing their businesses and professionalize their hobbies. The new feature launched in San Francisco earlier this month and is expanding to other U.S. cities. Read more »
Journatic, a local-journalism aggregation startup that used to provide content to newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, has been criticized for a series of ethical lapses. But that doesn’t mean the kind of outsourcing it represents isn’t part of the future of journalism. Read more »
The controversy over new-media startup Journatic and its hyper-local news service says a lot about how difficult it is to find new ways of producing journalism, in part because the traditional media industry and its supporters want to force everything into old models and familiar formats. Read more »
Media startup Journatic has come under fire for using fake bylines for hyper-local content that appeared in the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere. But the reality is that something like Journatic is likely a part of the future of local journalism, whether we like it or not. Read more »
Want to save money by hiring talent in a cheaper labor market? Previously, your choices were outsourcing abroad or rural sourcing here at home, but now a new third way is emerging – hiring workers in the lower cost hinterlands of foreign countries. Read more »
Technology these days means you can source talent from just about anywhere, so why is global tech firm Liaison Technologies looking to rural Illinois rather than overseas, and how has this rural sourcing impacted their business? COO Larry Mieldezis explains in an interview. Read more »
CrowdControl, which launched in November with the goal of improving the accuracy of crowdsourcing projects by analyzing results against a set of artificial intelligence techniques, has raised $2 million from Greycroft Partners and RTP Ventures. 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 »
LuxeYard, a site selling high-end home decor products, is launching Tuesday. Yes, it’s technically another flash sales site. But what’s interesting about LuxeYard is that it’s doing things a bit differently from the established players in the space such as One Kings Lane and Gilt Groupe. Read more »
If your company outsources IT, you might be looking longingly at cloud-based services, waiting for the day your contract expires to switch. Don’t give up hope. Scott Bils offers some options that can help get you over to the cloud even under your current contract. Read more »
The future of work is already here. It is just already distributed, one might say. The freelance economy, microtasking, mobile workers, coworking spaces, crowdsourcing: All of these point to how work is increasingly shifting from the twentieth-century model of Taylorism (think scientific management applied to labor processes such as assembly-line production and fixed workplaces) to a more flexible, hyperspecialized and connected workforce. This report examines the new world of work, from the devices and software services we use to the growing role of social media, the importance of a group-centric mentality and how the roles of employees, managers and organizations are evolving. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The economy might not be booming but online labor platforms sure are. Last month, oDesk announced impressive growth and today rival Elance is doing the same. Elance says this is great news for US professionals who can export their services abroad. Is it really? Read more »
Among business leaders, knocking the competition is an age-old pastime, and when we reported on complaints that online labor marketplaces like oDesk are driving down wages for freelancers, Mike Paolucci, CEO of U.S. focused labor platform Solvate, saw his opening. Meanwhile, oDesk fires back. Read more »
Former MIT researcher Nathan Eagle wanted to use outsourcing and mobile technology to lift people in Kenya and elsewhere out of poverty. But faced with the realities of the outsourcing business, he changed course, and now wants to bring marketing dollars to people in emerging economies. Read more »
The service provider responsible for Groupon’s daily e-mail deals, suffered a server outage this weekend that looks to have had a staggering effect on Groupon sales in several cities. This seems to play up Groupon’s overall dependence on emails as the primary method of subscriber interaction. Read more »
Managers establishing virtual teams may dream of attracting the best and brightest in New York, San Francisco and Shanghai. The workers of rural places and smaller cities probably feature less often. Now the proponents of a movement known as “rural sourcing” are trying to change that. Read more »
I had the chance to speak with Chris Ducker of Virtual Business Lifestyle about what it takes to become a virtual CEO, and how he transitioned to the role in just twelve months. Becoming a virtual CEO, he says, starts with passion and a plan. Read more »
Crowdsourcing is often used for fairly menial tasks: correcting databases, screening offensive images, transcribing audio. But what if you could make those little bits of human labor even more menial, discrete and interchangeable? That’s what the Finnish company Microtask does. Read more »
Certain parts of my business are what I’m increasingly becoming known for, and if I hope to continue standing out in these areas, I have to continue to seek excellence, and to me, excellence is not the same as perfection. Read more »
