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Australia is becoming a global hub for crowdsourcing platforms: Freelancer.com, 99designs, DesignCrowd

Ross Dawson, February 24, 2010 at 2:10 am

Crowdsourcing in the broadest sense will be one of the fundamental platforms of the emerging network economy. As such it’s pleasing to see that Australia is becoming a hub for a number of the most significant crowdsourcing platforms globally.

I caught up with Alec Lynch of DesignCrowd yesterday for an interesting conversation about the crowdsourcing space and thought it was worth giving a quick pointer to the three main platforms run out of Australia (though all are global in scope).

Freelancer.com, was founded in Sweden as getafreelancer.com in 2004. I first wrote about it in 2005 in an overview of the space. For many years it was the dominant online services exchange in Europe, and one of the top three globally. In May 2009 it was bought by Australian company Ignition Networks, which also acquired the domain Freelancer.com. The company is run by veteran tech entrepreneur Matt Barrie, who most recently founded and ran specialty processor firm Sensory Networks Inc.

The other two major crowdsourcing sites in Australia have been the global leaders in prize-driven design sites.

99designs has clients set a design brief and budget, and then provide feedback to designers during the design phase, ultimately selecting a winner who is awarded the full budget. It has been very successful though its model has many detractors in the design community. I wrote a post titled 9 practical steps to getting great outsourced design on 99designs reflecting on my experiences using the site.

DesignCrowd began life as DesignBay, using a similar prize-driven model to 99designs. Late last year it acquired the US company DesignCrowd and adopted its name. DesignCrowd is using more nuanced approaches to awarding prizes, including giving second place prizes and participation payments.

An interesting recent article in the Age titled Outsourcing on Steroids mentions 99designs and DesignBay and also quotes me on how companies can use crowdsourcing services.

Crowdsourcing is an extremely dynamic space. It will be interesting to see whether these and other Australian companies will grow their presence in the market. Certainly let me know if there are other companies I should be aware of.

I will be sharing more perspectives on crowdsourcing over the next little while, including an overview and taxonomy of the global crowdsourcing space.

For the most current insights and trends in the living networks, follow @rossdawson on Twitter!

http://nlablog.wordpress.com Angelina Russo

Hi Ross
Interesting article! Crowdsourcing design is the next big issue for design practitioners. I wrote a piece for Anthill magazine last year http://anthillonline.com/is-crowdsourcing-killing-the-traditional-design-industry/
Since then my research has developed and two big issues have become obvious…
Crowdsourcing itself can only go so far – for it to be of real value to designers, you need to develop methodologies which embed crowdsourcing in broader design development processes. (I’ve been working on this with colleagues and later this year we will be testing this methodology in a new project
Crowdsourcing can reinvent designer’s profiles
The best example I have found is http://www.etsy.com. It’s a kind of ebay for handmade design. It uses crowdsourcing to draw designers to the site then uses its community to profile different products and designers, thus raising the profile of individual designers. It adds opportunities for designers to showcase themselves (for a fee) and connects with all of the major distribution platforms (twitter, facebook etc)
I look forward to the day when companies such as 99designs extend their offer to make their service a place where designers can profile their talents rather than, as I suspect is the case for many, a place which they fear for the effect it will have on their business!
http://rossdawsonblog.com Ross Dawson

Great article Angelina – thanks!
I know Etsy as my wife Victoria Buckley has been very successful on it selling her lower value stock that doesn’t match the premium positioning of her jewellery store in the Strand Arcade – http://victoriabuckley.com/
I would love to know more about your projects – absolutely crowdsourcing is most valuable within a broader context and process. That’s when it creates value for all.
http://nlablog.wordpress.com Angelina Russo

Hi Ross
How funny is that! I’ve coveted jewellery from that store for years!!!
We have a new project in the works which trials this design-driven crowdsourced innovation methodology. I’ll be able to chat more about this in May!
In the meantime, Etsy has really caught my eye though while it is remarkably good at developing community and showcasing crowdsourced design, the mechanisms between traffic and actual sales seem less transparent. I suspect that this is an issue in crowdsourced sites such as 99designs as well. If you get 500 views, why doesn’t a product/design sell and more importantly, how do you harness those views to actually sell product?
It’s a derivative of a question I asked at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in 2009 – how do you convert community to sales? This will be of particular importance to designers who tend to focus on developing works for specific audiences rather than as speculative endevours.
I would be interested in your thoughts!
http://rossdawsonblog.com Ross Dawson

Hi Angelina,
It’s a great question and deserves a book to properly address it!
There are no easy answers, not least because different communities have very different characteristics and need corresponding approaches. The easiest is to bring together a community about buying, in which case the link to sales is very obvious. Another element is of course designing communities so they are readily found by search, bringing in people who want to take action. In other cases you can work on evolving the nature of the community over time so that it is more relevant to designers looking to sell their work…
http://twitter.com/Arleneuc Arlene Murchinson

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Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.