CrowdFlower

I hear the word “crowdsourcing” come up a lot, but it’s usually by people who don’t really know exactly what it means or how to do it. They’ll often say things like “Oh, we’ll just crowdsource it.” Ok, you do that! I have things that I’d love to crowdsource, but I can’t figure out how to manage such a project without making it more work than just doing the task myself. Maybe CrowdFlower is the answer. They’re a San Francisco, CA based company that allows you to “instantly hire millions of people to collect, filter, and enhance your data.” We’re at a point where technology can do a lot of heavy lifting, but sometimes a human of average intelligence is far better at solving a problem than even the most powerful computer.

Time to Blossom

So how do CrowdFlower clients use crowdsourcing? CrowdFlower doesn’t publicly list their clients or provide case studies, but if you look at their Solutions page you’ll see that they offer customer data enhancement, content moderation and curation, categorization, sentiment analysis, content generation, and more. A photo sharing site might use CrowdFlower to ensure that offensive pictures are flagged, or I might use CrowdFlower to improve our tagging system for companies. Here’s a video that explains How CrowdFlower Works:

What’s interesting about CrowdFlower is that they don’t directly employ their “contributors.” Instead they use channel partners to deliver the “crowd.” That’s one job option, but I think you’ll be far more interested in the positions post on CrowdFlower’s Jobs page. The most obvious opportunity for a new grad is their Entry Level Alchemist position. They call it a full-time internship, but it’s the fast track to a permanent position. However, you may also want to look at these positions: Technical CrowdSourcing Analyst, Operations Analyst, Operations Engineer, and Solid Fullstack Engineer.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• CrowdFlower.com
• Jobs at CrowdFlower
• About CrowdFlower
• CrowdFlower’s Blog

What have you heard about CrowdFlower?