Definition of crowdsourcing
: 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
- These sites take advantage of the phenomenon known as crowdsourcing, or turning to the online masses for free or low-cost submissions.
- —Katie Hafner
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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
