Plattformen

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Crowdfunding and the dynamics of the market

Crowdfunding as a new web based funding modell has a relative short history. At a closer look the phenomena crowdfunding often seems nebulous. It seems that the sheer spectrum and diversity of the crowdfunding plattforms offers a suitable projection screen for quite different interests.
Some financial newspapers see positive trends within some sectors whereas other papers write about the decline or even the disappearence of plattforms. Very otfen during the research also the facts seem vague and unclear: forecasts often second hand informations.[1] But very often they tend to speculation and hype.
But the sheer mass of forecasts for the capital market make one thing clear: the economy recognized the potential of the new financial model.[2] In the background enormous sums are flowing. In the year 2012 the crowdlending-based credits worldwide totalled $1.2 billion.[3] It`s the interest and the speculative nature of the markets which are changing the concept of crowdfunding (since there ever was one concept) substantially.
New markets are discovered [4] and market places are shifting also geograhically.[5][6] Since the highrise of the lending-based crowdfunding in the US in 2006-2008 as a indirect reaction of the banking crises the economic markets recovered and the banks are looking for strategies for regaining the territories.[7] But not only banks – some plattforms are sold to listed public limited companys with clear economic interests.[8]
Often the looks are only focused on the initiator of the crowdfunding campaign or the investors mostly consisting out of anonymous internet users – whereas the influence or the interest of the plattform itself is overlooked. The information of the economic interest of the plattform is cryptic and hidden under the catchwords of creativity and engagement.
The follow closer look at the plattforms shall make aware of the structures behind the plattforms. For a general overview we point out that we made a distinction between (...) since the plattforms itselves constitute genre specific behaviour. If they take fees and how much is often not so obvious.
One has to find for the hidden risks and guidelines that are the base of this newly grown industry, carefully.

List of References

Crowdfunding Platforms

Crowdlending

investigated platforms

1. Zopa (UK)

2. Lending Club (USA)

3. Ratesetter (UK)

4. smava (Germany)

5. auxmoney (Germany/Austria)

6. bankless24.de (Germany)

7. ThinCats (UK)

8. Zencap (Germany)

9. Finmar (Germany)

10. Lendico.at (Germany/Austria)

Description

Lending based crowdfunding is structured like a bank credit. There are three actors involved: The Borrower, The Lenders, which means people (the so called crowd) who are investing their money, and the platform. Usually, when there is a discussion about crowdfunding or peer2peer lending, there are just the two actors: Borrower and Lender under the highlights of Researchers. The interests, that the platform itself and its subcontractors have is neglected. But if you look closer there is a lot to discover.

Lending based Crowdfunding works like that:
You register to a platform, either as a person, who has a idea and wants to get money from a crowd for it, or as a person who want to invest his/her money, and get i back with interest rates between: 5-12 %. The Lender has to reach the fixed amount, in a certain time window, if not the Borrowers get their money back. If he or she reaches the amount the Borrower hast to pay back the money in a given time to a given interest.
The Legal background is not always that clear. Most Peer2peer Lending Platforms cooperate with ordinary banks, to verify the accounts and check the credit worthiness of the registered Borrowers. The Platforms are just agents that bring together people with different interest , but the involvement of the bank is usually not promoted or hidden.


Registry and privacy policy

Personal Data

Due to the legal base of the country, the platform is launched in, there are as many different conditions.But in General you could say, that all platforms work with registration.
For Crowdlending they need very sensitive Data and you have to present those to the platform. Required forms require not only your gender, your age, your name but also your earnings, your debts and your wealth. But also where it comes from, how much expenses you have per month and so on. The platform gives this information to the cooperative bank, who will check your credit-worthiness. But to get a Loan from the Public, you also have to publish a lot of these data on the platform itself, so ,that the crowd can check your trustworthiness and think about their investment properly.
This is something, that needs to be considered when creating a internet - ID, since the Lending - websites cannot guarantee for the most secure keeping of your data, which they say explicitly in their website policies.

Cookies

The second thing about data security that is important. Every platform listed here, uses Cookies. They are tiny pieces of codes, that report, what a website user does and how his click - and surf - behaviour is. This information is in most cases researched by Google Analytics, a Google - daughter, that informs the website about your interests and movements, so that they can specialize and personalize the ads and if necessary change the website in the interest of the customer. What Google Analytics does with all that freely collected data is to sell it.
You can easily forbid your browser to use Cookies, but as a result of this, in most cases you cannot use most websites properly. The information that is collected about you, is big business for some companies, if you are ok with that or not is another question.

Who is adressed

Appearance of the platforms

Who is behind the platform

Risks and criticism

Links

List of References

  • Beck, Ralf Prof. Dr.: Crowdinvesting. Die Investition der Vielen. Kulmbach: Börsenbuch Verlag 2014.
  • Luddabeh, Jens: Horizonte Crowdfunding. Die Masse macht's. in: Technology review, 10/2012, 10, S.32-38.

Equity Based-Crowdfunding

Description

Equity crowdfunding adopts making investments through individual investors seeking to invest for an eventual financial return in the business. In this model, individuals who fund,may become owners or shareholders. Equity crowdfunding is also referred to as crowd investing. Crowdfund investing is a new funding opportunity for small businesses and startups that holds tremendous potential, but it's not a free-for-all. Entrepreneurs, business owners, and investors alike should know the legislative boundaries set by the JOBS Act (which opened the door to this funding resource in 2012), the risks involved in this type of funding, and the potential rewards it offers both to companies and their supporters.

Who is adressed

Because equity crowdfunding involves investment into a commercial enterprise, it is often subject to securities and financial regulation. If the business succeeds, then its value goes up, as well as the value of a share in that business. Coverage of equity crowdfunding indicates that its potential is greatest with startup businesses that are seeking smaller investments to achieve establishment, while follow-on funding may come from other sources. Investment crowdfunding can be debt-based or equity-based, or can follow other models, including profit-sharing and hybrid models. The term equity crowdfunding is often used to describe crowd investing into both debt and equity based instruments when they are offered on an equity crowdfunding platform.

Registry and privacy policy

If you want to raise money via crowdfund investing, you must meet some requirements set in the JOBS Act. Here are the key provisions that affect how small businesses and entrepreneurs can use this funding opportunity: Funding is limited to $1 million per year. This limit for crowdfund investing allows for sufficient seed money or early-stage investment for most businesses, while avoiding the unintended consequence of having larger organizations use this asset class as an ATM. Funding occurs on an all-or-nothing basis. This provision means that the entrepreneur or business determines upfront the financial goal for a crowdfund investing campaign, works diligently to accomplish that goal, and either succeeds (and receives the full amount) or fails (and receives nothing, despite whatever investment pledges have been made).

Personal Data

Money can be solicited only from people who are connected to you via a social network. You can't post an ad to raise money for your startup idea on the radio, in a newspaper, in a magazine, or on television. Instead, you can solicit funds from people who know you by using an online funding portal to reach out to people with a general notice on your social networks. The people in your social networks may then extend your solicitation to people they know, which offers you more layers of possible investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulates how you can direct people to your funding pitch (on your online portal) using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, e-mail, and other online networks. Visit the SEC to find the most up-to-date information on the regulations at play. Only SEC-registered websites and broker-dealers can host crowdfund investing campaigns. The JOBS Act mandates that anyone seeking crowdfund investments must do so via an SEC-registered website or, in some cases, through a broker-dealer. The websites, known as funding portals, help the SEC make sure that a company seeking funds has disclosed as much information as possible so investors can make informed decisions. They also prevent a company from getting any of the funds unless it hits its stated campaign goal. If you're going to seek crowdfund investment support, you must use one of these SEC-registered websites (or a broker-dealer). Doing otherwise will land you in trouble

Risks and criticism

Crowdfund investments are high risk. On average, 50 percent of new companies fail within their first year, so these investments should be only a small part of your overall financial portfolio. If you're completely risk averse, you have no business investing in small, private companies at all. If, however, you can tolerate volatility and risk in a small portion of your portfolio for the sake of potentially receiving some significant financial returns, a crowdfund investment may make sense.

Investigated platforms
1. Green rocket
2. Seed invest
3. Crowd cube
4. Crowd funder
5. Early shares
6. Syndicates
7. Equity net
8. Our crowd

Links

List of References


Reward-based Platform

Reward-based Crowd funding platforms are especially used in the field of creativity works such as music, literature, film, theatre, games, product and graphic design. It attracts a large number of people because these platforms can make an entrepreneur, a designer, a producer out of everyone who possesses a computer with Internet access, a bank account and has the time and skills to serve a camera and to run social media work. Customers also need a sales talent because they are going to advertise their products by their selves. Of course it already appeals if it’s known that the creator who stands behind the product is a person like you and me or even an acquaintance of yours. Further it makes someone thinking that if anyone can do it, I should try it too. That makes it a rather successful concept.
In general a new customer of the platform with the idea of a prototype or the wish to produce a record of music runs through several phases to reach the final aim, which means the needed financial support for the production. Users of the prevailing platform or other people attracted by the customers advertising work prepay a certain amount of money to get some goodies often related to the product or the final product itself. The prepaid money belongs for the most part to the creator to realize the desired product, but only if the defined total was reached. Thereupon supporters get their rewards. Otherwise their money will be returned to their bank accounts.

Investigated platforms

1. INDIEGOGO (USA)

2. Pozible (Australia)

3. ArtistShare (USA)

4. Kickstarter (USA)

5. Startnext (Austria)

6. ES GEHT! crowdfunding.at (Austria)


INDIEGOGO (USA)

Indiegogo is an online crowdfunding venue for people and entities seeking to raise funds for their own Campaigns and to contribute to the Campaigns of others. Campaign Owners can offer gifts or rewards in the form of tangible items or intangible services (collectively, "Perks") to Contributors. Indiegogo was created by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell, launched on 2008 /USA, which supports many categories : Animals-Art -Comic -Community -Dance -Design –Education- Environment- Fashion -Film Food –Gaming- Health –Music- Photography –Politics- Religion -Small Business -Sports Technology -Theater -Transmedia -Video/Web and Writing. Donors, investors, or customers who are willing to order a project or a product can donate and receive a gift depending on the offered Perks.

Registry and privacy policy

Launching a campaign, sign up and contribute to a campaign is free and the minimum age for registration is 18, for the ages 13-17 they also could register and use the Services with the consent and supervision of their parent or legal guardian who is at least 18 years old, provided that the parent or legal guardian also agrees to be bound by the Terms and agrees to be responsible for the use of the Services. Indiegogo offers two funding models :Flexible and Fixed Funding. In case of reaching the goal with either a Flexible or Fixed Funding campaign the inventors keep what they have raised, but be charged a fee of 4% of the funds. If the campaign is Verified Nonprofit, the platform fees would decrease to 3%. If the inventor doesn't reach the goal within the deadline in case of a Flexible Funding campaign, inventors also keep funds they raised, but be charged a fee of 9% of the funds. And in case of a Fixed Funding campaign, all of the contributors will be refunded but there would be an additional payment processing fee of 3-5%, depending on the payment options. $25 wire fee charged once when non-US campaigns have raised funds in USD via Direct Credit Card. The funds are wired in one lump sum to a non-US bank account after the campaign has ended and additional currency exchange fees may also apply. Campaigns raising funds in EUR (€) or AUD (A$) will be able to accept contributions via PayPal only. In addition there are no additional fees to create and use an Indiegogo Partner Page. The Website offers a publicly accessible blog. Any information you provide in these areas may be displayed publicly and read, collected, and used by others who access them.

Appearance of the platforms

Indiegogo features campaigns on the main homepage, category pages, blog, newsletter, and social media pages. Campaigns earn featured spots by staying active and the system measures a campaign activity with an algorithm called gogofactor[1]. 224 countries & territories. 5 currencies. 4 languages offered by the Platform. Display on the Indiegogo Partner Gallery is limited to Partners who have accumulated a minimum of 3 campaigns that have amassed a total of $15,000 in contributions between them. Indiegogo uses many type of cookies which are Strictly necessary or essential cookies, Performance cookies, Functionality cookies, Advertising and targeting cookies.

Who is behind the platform

More than 100 organizations have Partner Pages on Indiegogo. Current Partners include the American Film Institute (AFI), Fractured Atlas, Startup America, Google, Whole Kids Foundation (non-profit arm of Whole Foods), the Architecture for Humanity, Stanford, The American Red Cross, and many more. For credit card funds raised in USD, Indiegogo will be able to send money to any non-U.S. bank account via bank-to-bank wire transfer. For credit card funds raised in CAD($) or GBP (£), Indiegogo will only be able to send money to a bank account located in Canada for CAD($) or UK for GBP (£). Contributors from outside the US will only be able to contribute if they own a US-issued credit or debit card for now. Apple announced that support for international credit cards is planned for 2015. There are 3 options for managing payments: Standard Payment Management Each campaign is a separate funding entity. The campaign owner raises money and receives disbursement payments from Indieogogo. Partner Managed Payments (Fiscal Sponsors) The money raised through each campaign can go directly through to the Partners PayPal account. The Partner is then responsible for disbursing funds to the campaign owners (most often used with Fiscal Sponsor Partners). Non-profit payment management Campaigners who are raising money for a 501(c)(3)[2] can choose to raise money directly for a non-profit organization The money raised through each campaign can go directly to the Partners non-profit account. This will only apply if the NPO has a PayPal account. Otherwise the for-profit partner model is applied.

Risks and criticism

In general there are many risks by using any type of Crowdfunding Platforms regardless of how organized or how creative the campaigns are, however there are main three risks may we consider which are the Market risk, Execution risk and the Financing risk. Indiegogo is valuable for mitigating all of these risks. When people fund an idea or product on Indiegogo before it actually exists, it’s a testament that they really want it, demonstrating reduced market risk. And data collected from an Indiegogo campaign is real market data, not just hypotheticals from a focus group. Also the legal responsibility for ensuring that a given project isn't fraudulent or otherwise illegal falls squarely on the funder's shoulders, Indiegogo doesn't guarantee that Contributions will be used as promised, that Campaign Owners will deliver Perks, or that the Campaign will achieve its goals. Indiegogo does not endorse, guarantee, make representations, or provide warranties for or about the quality, safety, morality or legality of any Campaign, Perk or Contribution, or the truth or accuracy of content posted on the Service. Indiegogo is not responsible for the performance of PayPal or any third party credit card processing services [3].

Links

[1]* http://support.indiegogo.com/hc/en-us/articles/527476-The-Gogofactor
[2]* http://www.501c3.org/what-is-a-501c3/
[3]* https://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms

Pozible (Australia)

Pozible was created by Rick Chen and Alan Crabbe, launched on 2010/Australia, which supports many categories: Music -Film -Community -Performance -Art -Writing -Technology -Other -Event -Food & Drink -Design -Social Enterprise -Photography -Journalism -Fashion -Video -Game -Research -Craft- Comics and Environment.

Registry and privacy policy

Launching a campaign, sign up and contribute to a campaign is free and the minimum age for registration is 18, for the ages 13-17 they also could register and use the Services with the consent and supervision of their parent or legal guardian who is at least 18 years old, provided that the parent or legal guardian also agrees to be bound by the Terms and agrees to be responsible for the use of the Services. Charge fees to Project Creators only if their project successfully reaches their funding target. In the case of successful projects, funds will capture from Project Supporters and transfer the funds to the Project Creator directly after 7 days of the deadline. 130 countries & territories. 4 offices in China, Australia, USA, & Singapore. support the major payment options including PayPal, Stripe, Alipay, and Bitcoin. Two models –standard and self hosted. Pozible Service Fee: 5%: total funds raised up to $100,000 4%: total funds raised between $100,000 - $500,000 (or projects issued an invitation code) 3%: total funds raised of $500,000 or over Merchant Transaction Fees (Credit Cards) Per Transaction: Australia 2.4% + 30c (Australian card) / 3.4% + 30c (international card) China 2.9% Transaction Fee + 2% Exchange Fee. Alipay - 1.2% Singapore 3.4% + 30c New Zealand 3.4% + 30c

Links


Being your own Platform

The case of Heinrich Staudinger

Heinrich Staudinger was born in the year 1953 in Vöcklabruck, Upper Austria. He founded the GEA-company and is majority shareholder of the self-governed shoe factory Waldviertler Shoes in Schrems, Lower Austria, since 1991. Shoes, bags and furniture are produced there as well as mattresses. He also publishes the journal brennstoff and organizes the GEA-Akademie. [1] [2]

He stopped trusting in his bank when the credit limit for the company was shortened without giving any reasons. 2003 the factory was free of debt and had a good credit standing. Staudinger decided to ask friends and relatives to invest in the company who received interests as well. Later also employees and customers made investigations through the GEA Sparverein. According to Staudinger they are not interested in making more and more profit but to create jobs and just work there. Until 2012 the factory developed well.[3] They could create over 150 places of employment and achieve a huge photovoltaic system for the workshop. Depositors always knew what the money was used for and they were also informed of the stage of development. But these conditions shouldn’t last very much longer…

FMA (FinanzMarktAufsicht, english: supervision of the financial market)

"Der FMA (der FinanzMarktAufsicht) ist bekannt, dass der “GEA Sparverein” Gelder von Kunden entgegengenommen hat und dafür Zinsen an die Kunden bezahlt wurden bzw. werden. Überdies ist der FMA bekannt, dass für die Finanzierung einer Solaranlage ebenso Kundengelder entgegengenommen wurden. Wer Bankgeschäfte ohne die erforderliche Berechtigung betreibt … ist von der FMA mit Geldstrafe bis zu 50.000 Euro zu bestrafen.”[4]

"The FMA is aware of the fact that the “GEA Sparverein” received moneys from customers and that for paid respectively will pay interests to the customers. Furthermore the FMA is aware of the fact that for the financing of a solar equipment also moneys of customers were accepted. Who runs bank deals without the necessary permission … has to be punished by a fine of up to 50.000 Euros form the FMA.”

Heinrich Staudinger resisted paying the fine and he is still fighting against this kind of treatment. According to him private loan agreements are an essential tool for small and medium-sized businesses.[5] Within the whole criminal proceedings it became clear that this direct way of loan agreements is only legal with a bank charter or a so-called Nachranklausel (english: subordinated clause). That means that as a company it is only possible to receive loans directly from private persons in a legal way if you are a bank or if depositors sign another contract which informs them about their risks. With their signature lenders agree that the repayment of the loan is not anymore possible in the case of insolvency and furthermore that in case of a bankruptcy matter claims in respect of a loan are taken in consideration after not-secondary claims in respect of a loan are fulfilled.[6][7] GEA/Waldviertler regards this method as a possible way to cope with the situation, but they insist of changing the current law.

Bürgerinitiative – local initiative

To realize a lasting change in the legal basis a local initiative was founded. It’s called “Wir sind viele” (We are many) and it requires the general liberty of direct credit granting. That for a legislative proposal was formulated.[8] Heinrich Staudinger regularly stages events and symposiums around this topic.

Links


Donation-based Crowdfunding

Description

Donation based platforms provide services to collect donations to support initiatives for specific purposes from the crowd for a collaborative goal in form of a project or organisation and receive products, perks or rewards in return for their contribution.

The target is to create a good conscience and this is mainly motivated by social networks and the viral nature of crowdfunding itself. In literature it is assumed that donations are made because individuals want to be altruistic, but crowdfunders donate as well as they expect to be consumers or enjoy sufficient community benefits someday.

Though big Charity organisations started online collection a long time ago, several new donation-based crowdfunding sites are established since 2008 and allow small organisations and individuals to collect contributions from the crowd. The big financial potential can be seen in the rapid growth of donor based crowd funding, that hat a three times higher growing rate than equity based crowdfunding.

On one hand is the donation-based entrepreneurship, in which not-for-profit organizations are the only sustainable organizational structure to access donations. On the other hand donors give money to support a business, so that the entrepreneur can carry the project forward, as they expect to become future consumers and get large community benefits. This implies that crowdfunders do not expect any financial rewards from their investment and finance the project without sharing the profits with the entrepreneur.

The target audience of donation-based crowdfunding platforms are primarily individuals tough Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) of enterprises and private foundations would provide economic potential that will certainly be addressed in the near future. For an appropriate platform the problem, how individuals and enterprises are provided an equal status with their donations in fulfilling the goal would have to be solved.

Investigated platforms

1. GlobalGiving (USA)

2. Watsi (USA)

3. FundRazr (Canada)

4. GiveForward (USA)

5. FirstGiving (USA)

6. Betterplace (Germany)


GlobalGiving

“The world is full of problems. GlobalGiving is full of solutions.”

GlobalGiving is a non-profit organisation based in the USA that realises innovative grassroots projects all over the world by providing a donation based crowd funding platform. The concept enables social entrepreneurs and non-profits from all over the world to raise money to start their projects for improving their communities, aside the usual way of Bank funds.

Who is behind the platforms

The GlobalGiving Foundation (GGF) is a tax-exempt non-profit organisation that is imbedded in a network of implementing, corporate an institutional partners. The charity platform was launched by Mari Kuraishi and Dennis Whittle, both former executives at the World Bank, in 2002. In 1997 there was an internal competition with the task for developing innovative ways to combat poverty. The Development Marketplace was the winner of the theoretical contest and as further development the charity platform GlobalGiving was launched in 2002. Since the beginning, the organisation has raised 155,300,568 dollars from 409,066 donors who have supported 10,940 projects. There are a lot of global player partners from economy that contribute in different ways and make it easy for GlobalGiving to occur on several media levels.

Apperance of the platforms

On the main homepage Global giving features campaigns, category pages where can be chosen between region or topic and social media pages like Facebook and Twitter. Selected current projects are featured on a banner with suggested donation amounts. The site is written in English and the currency for contribution is Dollar.

Who is adressed?

The platform addresses to individuals and companies who can donate through the website for themselves or in Honor or Memory of somebody, whereat the minimum of the donation is 10 Dollar. If the donor is not satisfied with the giving experience a gift certificate equal to the value of the original donation is refunded.

Registery and privacy policy

If creating a fundraiser or registry on GlobalGiving, an application has to be sent to join the organisation, there are no monetary costs for the applier. To become a member of the donor management system the projects go through due diligence; they have to proofe to be an officially charitable organisation registered by government and release financial information of the last two fiscal years. If successfully competed in the application process, they will be invited to participate in an open challenge for raising 5000 Dollars from at least 40 donors in 4 weeks to become a long-term members of GlobalGiving or if failing, to resign. To make a donation an account has to be installed with basis information like name, email and billing address. It is possible to donate “one time” or “monthly recurring” and a 15 % fulfilment fee is charged to the amount of donated money. There are no rewards given but you get regular information about the progress of the project. There is the possibility to disclosure the share of name, date and amount of for the chosen project. Information of the personal use of the platform is collected by cookies from GlobalGiving, by Google Analytics and Google and so their Terms of Use and Privacy Policy are also accepted.

Risks and criticism

For donation this platform is easy to use. Due to the strict allowance policy for fundraisers there is no risk for the donation and the reward policy enables to change the project it not satisfied with the results. For the fundraisers it is more difficult to take part in the system because of the verifications they have to bring. It is not possible to take part if there is just a good idea, you have to proof to be a serious organisation with financial backround, what excludes certain projects. The organisation has a lot of important partners what could be seen as using the platform to improve their social commitment, due to the fact that GlobalGiving is so well known and widespread.

Links

http://www.globalgiving.org
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2012/03/27/a-year-later-in-japan-globalgiving-and-the-long-road/
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/how-to-change-the-world/?_r=0

List of References

http://perso.uclouvain.be/paul.belleflamme/papers/JBV2013.pdf
http://funginstitute.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/V.Kuppuswamy_Crowdfunding%20-%20UCBerkeley.pdf
http://www.lawforchange.org/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=6348
http://www.freedman-chicago.com/ec4i/History-of-Crowdfunding.pdf
http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/1050-why-donation-based-crowdfunding-is-here-to-stay-and-growing
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17512786.2010.551018#.VH2DRL47-Ow

Crowdsourcing

Description

The web is always more often used to raise fund, and the crowdfunding platforms allow the movement of a huge flow of money. But there are also web platforms, which apply themselves to the flow of knowledge, ideas and skills. These are the so-called “crowdsourcing” platforms, which work in a way that we could define distributed problem solving [1] or collective mobilization [2]. Since the aim of this “problem solving” process is to address as many people as possible, in order to confirm the Rule of big numbers, the stakeholders come from an online-community, available thanks to some dedicated space, i.e. the platforms, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Also the name crowdsourcing refers to this huge, undefined public, the “crowd”, which represents the external help: the open call is launched outside in the web (therefore sourcing, from out-sourcing, externalization) without knowing who exactly is going to answer. [3] The word was coined in 2005 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, editors at Wired Magazine.

Types of platforms

While getting into the constellation of these platforms, you might come across many terms, whose meaning is not clear at first, but that can help you to understand better which is the aim of the platform and which project does it support. We could assume a categorization of the crowdsourcing platforms according to the flow they are dealing with:

  • Knowledge: these kinds of platforms host the projects which goal is to collect information from the users.

The motto is that everyone can add what he knows and probably the most famous example come out of them is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that uses a Wiki platform. Also OpenStreetMap emerged from a Wiki platform. It provides localized information for the whole word, thanks to 1.6 millions users working on it. If we talk about flow of knowledge it is also appropriate to include in this category the platforms that promote the so-called crowd-voting: it occurs when a website gathers a large group’s opinions and judgment on a certain topic. [4] The sphere of application of crowd-voting goes from market strategies to political issues, since that the received feedback can be exploited in druthers of upcoming decisions. Terms related to this crowdsourcing: open data, distributed knowledge, wiki platform, crowd-voting

  • Ideas: these platforms host the stakeholders who make an open call for successful ideas.

The motto is that it is easier to get good ideas when there are more brains working on it, and that what makes a project a great project it’s exactly the idea itself, rather than the economical involvement in its realization. Crowd-creation is a broad field, which includes many stakeholders; depending on those you can find some categorizations of the process. For example, in some web sites it appears to be a clear difference between the terms open innovation, co-creation and crowdsourcing, while in others the words are used indifferently. Regarding the platform Wazuko [5] open innovation is the “oldest” term and means creating and innovating with external stakeholders: customers, suppliers, partners and the company’s wider community. It allows a real democratic exchange and the exceeding of the strict borders between demand and supply parties. While open innovation suggests active collaboration between different organisations and the sharing of intellectual property, co-creation relates more specifically to the relationship between an organisation and a defined group of end users, its customers. Co-creation means that these end users help the vendors to improve the quality of a product or service with their own personal engagement. According to Wazuko the difference with crowdsourcing is that while in this one there is first one open call and then the solution of the problem by the crowd, in co-creation the crowd works with the company. Generally speaking we can state that this bottom-up process is having a really large impact on the market strategies and that crowdsourcing is representing now a new possible model of production. The use of social input for many companies can make the difference between them and their competitors: in a world of widely distributed knowledge, where the boundaries between a firm and its environment have become more permeable, companies cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research and ideas to maintain a competitive advantage. [6] But it’s not all about private companies and the market: there are many platforms that support flow of ideas addressed to the common good. One example is the platform 10.000 ideas, which aim is to switch the perception of the Latin American megacities into human scale cities, built from the people who live within it. Crowdsourcing -collaborative creativity- is the essential cornerstone of the project: participating is really easy, for instance you can contribute to the final success by simply saying that in one precise point you need a traffic light! [7] Terms related to this crowdsourcing: open innovation, co-creation, crowdsourcing, crowd creativity, participatory design

  • Skills: microtasking, cloud labour, crowd-testing, citizen science… to be continued

Co-creation

  • inspire participation
  • select the very best
  • connect creative minds
  • share results
  • continue development

Platforms screening

References
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