crowdsourcing
noun
crowd·sourc·ing
ˈkrau̇d-ˌsȯr-siŋ 
: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers
Online crowdsourcing strategies that induce masses of people to solve a task, such as locating far-flung items or alleviating world hunger, work best when financial incentives impel participants to enlist friends and acquaintances in the effort, a new study concludes.—
Bruce Bower
Bruce BowerThese sites take advantage of the phenomenon known as crowdsourcing, or turning to the online masses for free or low-cost submissions.—Katie Hafner
Katie Hafner
crowdsource
transitive verb
crowdsourced; crowdsourcing
But many people don't know the story behind Legos—how the company, on the verge of collapse, crowdsourced its future by polling its most hardcore fans, or how the little blocks have exploded to become a major force in education …
—Smithsonian
Smithsonian
Examples of crowdsourcing in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The University of Central Florida team plans to use online crowdsourcing services such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to help manually create such training datasets.
—IEEE Spectrum, 24 Jan. 2017
One way that the museum obtained some of the pieces in its collection is through crowdsourcing, notes Meghan Bill, the museum’s coordinator of provenance, an expert who researches and documents an object’s history.
—Jacoba Urist, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Mar. 2025
The crowdsourcing platform has become a major player for fundraising immediate needs in the US, especially in regards to disaster relief.
—Sam Delgado, Vox, 7 Dec. 2018
But there are a few issues with individual crowdsourcing.
—Sam Delgado, Vox, 7 Dec. 2018
See All Example Sentences for crowdsourcing
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IEEE Spectrum, 24 Jan. 2017
One way that the museum obtained some of the pieces in its collection is through crowdsourcing, notes Meghan Bill, the museum’s coordinator of provenance, an expert who researches and documents an object’s history.
—Jacoba Urist, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Mar. 2025
The crowdsourcing platform has become a major player for fundraising immediate needs in the US, especially in regards to disaster relief.
—Sam Delgado, Vox, 7 Dec. 2018
But there are a few issues with individual crowdsourcing.
—Sam Delgado, Vox, 7 Dec. 2018
See All Example Sentences for crowdsourcing
Cite this Entry
“Crowdsourcing.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcing. Accessed 30 Apr. 2025.
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