Open Technologist

Facebook’s Crowdsourcing Translation Reward System

Last year Facebook turned to crowdsourcing to translate Facebook into other languages with great success. Latest statistics provided by Facebook show that over 300,000 people have since participated in the translation process making Facebook available in more than 70 languages. Facebook have now launched a system that rewards translators who will receive special icons when they reach certain milestones in the Translation application in order to highlight recognition. The awards are grouped...

Crowdsourcing Definition by Jeff Howe

A while back I blogged about how Facebook used crowdsourcing to translate Facebook into other languages and mentioned that the term "crowdsourcing" was coined by Jeff Howe author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. I recently came accross this video from Jeff giving a brief overview of what crowdsourcing is...

Crowdsourcing Example – Facebook Crowdsourcing for Translations

Crowdsourcing is a term coined by Jeff Howe who described it as an open call by a company to a large group of individuals who are invited to partake in a task that would under traditional circumstances be performed by employees of the company. Facebook with its worldwide user-base has turned to crowdsourcing to translate Facebook into other languages such as German, French and Spanish amongst others. An application is used to translate bits of the site which is then voted upon by other users...

Google Search in 2001

Google has decided to allow users to see what it was like to use the their search engine in 2001. Using the index from 2001 just tells us how the world has changed since 2001: Youtube returned no results Facebook was still a Harvard student search engine Wikipedia was still in its it infant status and part of Nupedia iPod was not associated with an mp3...