ChapterPDF Available

Social Media Crowdsourcing

January 2017

DOI:10.1007/978-1-4614-6616-1_200009-1

In book: Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (pp.1-5)

Authors:

Jordi Paniagua

University of Valencia

Pawel Korzynski

Kozminski University

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Content may be subject to copyright.

Social Media Crowdsourcing

Jordi Paniagua

and Pawel Korzynski

2,3

Faculty of Economics and Business, Catholic

Universtiy of Valencia San Vicente Mártir,

Valencia, Spain

Dept. Human Resources, Kozminski University,

Warszawa, Poland

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Synonyms

Consumer-generated media;Online social net-

works;Social networking sites;Virtual

outsourcing.

Introduction

Crowdsourcing is the process of outsourcing a

business task or activity to a network of individ-

uals. Crowdsourcing tales place on social media, a

group of Internet-based applications that allow the

creation and exchange of virtual content. Social

media and crowdsourcing are shaping the way

companies interact with consumers and changing

the business landscape.

Key Concepts and Definition of Terms

Social Media

Social media is an ambiguous, evolving concept

that is frequently interchanged with related con-

cepts of Web 2.0,user-generated content, and

consumer-generated media. Social media builds

upon different technologies including blogs, web

pages, networking sites, and forums among others

to allow interaction and communication between

users. However, the nature of social media is

broader concept than a speciﬁc technological plat-

form. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010)deﬁne social

media “as a group of Internet-based applications

that build on the ideological and technological

foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the crea-

tion and exchange of user-generated content.”

Obar and Wildman (2015) identify four distinc-

tive traits of social media:

•Web 2.0 Internet-based applications

•User-generated content

•Individuals and groups create user-speciﬁc

proﬁles for a site or app designed and

maintained by a social media service

•Social media connects a user’s proﬁle with

those of other individuals and/or groups

#Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2017

E.G. Carayannis (ed.), Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship,

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-6616-1_200009-1

Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 was coined at the end of the XX

century by DiNucci (1999), but it was popularized

widely in an annual summit held in San Francisco

from 2004 to 2011. Web 2.0 describes the evolu-

tion of web sites from a unicast to a multicast

service. Web 2.0 represents an ideological and

technological foundation of the World Wide

Web, where content is continuously created and

modiﬁed by many users in a collaborative manner.

Web 2.0 challenges users with an active interac-

tion as creators of user-generated content. Several

technological innovations have been necessary to

surpass passive viewing of content like Ajax and

JavaScript frameworks.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) represents the dif-

ferent manners in which users utilize social media.

UGC describes the variety of media content

uploaded by end users in Web 2.0 Internet-based

applications. According to the Organization for

Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD 2007), UGC has the following

characteristics:

•Publicly available online

•Creative

•Nonprofessional

UGC includes a large variety of public content

like posts, tweets, blogs, wikis, chats, podcasts,

videos, images, and audios. However, UGC

excludes peer-to-peer or private communications

like email or instant messaging. Commercial con-

tent or replication of existing content does not ﬁt

the general deﬁnition of UGC. UGC may be

curated by a system administrator to prevent

unappropriated or copyright content.

The combination of UGC with the ideological

(e.g., digital natives and millennials) and techno-

logical (e.g., mobile applications, coverage, and

bandwidth) foundations of Web 2.0 give rises to

the social media ecosystem.

Building Blocks of Social Media

Kietzmann et al. (2011) establish the seven build-

ing blocks of social media, with implications on

functionality:

1. Identity: The extent to which users reveal

themselves

•Implications: Data privacy controls and

tools for user self-promotion

2. Conversations: The extent to which users are

ordered or form communities

•Implications: Conversation velocity and the

risks of starting and joining

3. Sharing: The extent to which users exchange,

distribute, and receive content

•Implications: Content management system

and social graph

4. Presence: The extent to which users know if

others are available

•Implications: Creating and managing the

reality, intimacy, and immediacy of the

context

5. Relationships: The extent to which users relate

to each other

•Implications: Managing the structural and

ﬂow properties in a network of relationships

6. Reputation: The extent to which users know

the social standing of others and content

•Implications: Monitoring the strength, pas-

sion, sentiment, and reach of users and

brands

7. Groups: The extent to which users are ordered

or form communities

•Implications: Membership rules and

protocols

Social Media Types

The following list describes some of the most

popular social media types:

•General social networking sites

•Corporate social networking sites

•Creativity Works sharing sites (video, photo,

content)

•Personal blogs

•Corporate blogs

•Help/frequently asked questions (FAQ) sites

•Collaborative sites

2 Social Media Crowdsourcing

•Commerce communities

•Podcasts

•News sites

•Educational sites

•Open-source software sites

•Social bookmarking sites

•Academic sharing sites

•Mobile communication apps

Theoretical Background and Open-ended

Issues: Social Media and Business

Performance

One of the main differences between traditional

and social media is the business potential of the

latter. Social media allows ﬁrms new business and

marketing opportunities. For example, customers

can be targeted based on their location, prefer-

ences, past experiences, or social circle. Compa-

nies use social media for market research, direct

communications with customers, sales and pro-

motions, or e-commerce.

Paniagua and Sapena (2014) posit that social

media resources (e.g., conversations, identities,

shares) are conveyed into business capabilities

(e.g., customer links, sales abilities, reputation

placement). They identify four channels by

which social media increases business

performance:

1. Social capital: Corporate social performance

depends on the ﬁrm’s social capital or the trust-

worthy relations with the society through cor-

porate identity and reputation. Social media

shapes the ﬁrm’s brand and reputation, which

determine CSP capabilities through the social

capital channel.

2. Customer’s revealed preferences: Customers

reveal the preferences with conversation, shar-

ing, and presence in social media. Through

social media mining, companies anticipate

demand for products and services. Customer’s

revealed preferences have an effect on ﬁnan-

cial performance (like share prices), which

depends on market expectations.

3. Social marketing: Social media is embedded

in today’s marketing strategy. Social media

marketing is multi-cast and involves interac-

tion, conversation, sharing, collaboration, and

engagement. Additionally, ﬁrms can tailor

marketing directly to individual customer’s

preferences, tastes, and experiences. Firms

can use social marketing resources (e.g., con-

versations, sharing, presence) which are trans-

formed to increase ﬁnancial performance

capabilities (e.g., sales).

4. Social corporate networking: Social corpo-

rate networking refers to the interconnection of

professionals and ﬁrms staff through social

media. Social corporate networking sites (like

LinkedIn) connect job applicants, staff, stu-

dents, and users on a professional level. The

social ties occur within the company and also

with other ﬁrms. Corporate networking is nor-

mally persistent, and users stay connected with

former colleagues. This type of business social

media allows companies to identify better job

candidates and to stay connected with cus-

tomers and former employees. Thus, social

corporate networking increases the ﬁrm’s oper-

ational performance (Fig. 1).

Implications for Theory, Policy, and

Practice: Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing refers to the process of

outsourcing a business activity to a self-selected

network of undeﬁned individuals. The outsourced

task could have been performed internally by

employees or suppliers, but instead it is executed

individually or collaboratively by a large group of

people. The organization proﬁts from participa-

tive (generally altruistic) services, ideas, or con-

tent. Social media is the usual platform to perform

crowdsourcing. Both parties beneﬁt from

crowdsourcing: the user satisﬁes needs like social

recognition, self-esteem, or the development of

individual skills (Estellés-Arolas and González-

Ladrón-de-Guevara 2012) and the crowdsourcer

Social Media Crowdsourcing 3

reduced costs, speed, quality, ﬂexibility, scalabil-

ity, and diversity. Crowdsourcing is usually

designed as an open call or as a contest.

Crowdsourcing Types

Palacios et al. (2016) identify ﬁve emerging trends

in crowdsourcing:

1. Problem solving: With crowdsourcing, ﬁrms

use collective intelligence from different exter-

nal sources to solve internal problems.

Crowdsourcing is an appropriate mechanism

to explore activities in the areas of research

and development, market research, knowledge

management, and customer service.

2. Learning paradigms: Crowdsourcing is

source for the generation of new ideas which

contribute to organizational learning.

Crowdsourcing is normally associated with

nascent and innovative ﬁrms. However, it rep-

resents a learning opportunity for ﬁrms in

mature markets with a low level of innovation.

3. Open innovation: Open innovation represents

the needs of organization to access new knowl-

edge. Crowdsourcing is used to share, reuse,

recombine, and accumulate knowledge to

achieve external and internal innovation. In

this sense, the crowd is seen as an innovation

partner.

4. New product development: User innovations

can be used to create new products, designs,

and services which satisfy the needs of

customers. The crowd can provide ﬁrms with

resources and feedback in the process of creat-

ing new products.

5. Collaborative initiative: Collaborative initia-

tives are an emerging trend in crowdsourcing.

Many start-ups use crowdsourcing as a coordi-

nation and collaboration mechanism. Firms

also seek partnerships or investment through

crowdfunding, where entrepreneurs raise funds

or donations from the crowd. New business

models dedicated to crowdsourcing itself,

with online platforms that enable third parties

to launch and manage collaborative

crowdsourcing initiatives.

Crowdsourcing and Business

Through crowdsourcing, organizations draw

unique resources from the crowd (e.g., knowl-

edge) to build performance-enhancing capabili-

ties (e.g., acquisition, innovation). Prpićet al.

(2015) argue that ﬁrms build crowd capital or

organizational resources acquired through

crowdsourcing. Crowd capital increases business

performance in three stages:

1. Constructing a crowd: Crowdsourcing is

rarely a spontaneous event; it is initiated and

curated by the ﬁrm. The crowd is selected

depending on the organizational considering

size, speciﬁc skills, and external (from people

outside of the organization) or internal mem-

bership (from employees).

Social Media

Crowdsourcing,

Fig. 1 Social media and

business performance

(Paniagua and Sapena

2014)

4 Social Media Crowdsourcing

2. Developing crowd capabilities: Organiza-

tions need to establish how to obtain resources

dispersed in a crowd and align them with its

goals and internal processes. The crowd capa-

bility consists of acquisition and assimilation

capabilities. Acquisition capabilities refer to

determining the type of crowd interaction

required for the acquisition of knowledge and

choosing the best suited platform. Assimilation

capability is the process of in the internal

assimilation of crowd contributions. Organiza-

tions need to institute internal processes to

organize the incoming crowd knowledge.

3. Harnessing crowd capital: An organization

can construct separate or overlapping internal

and external crowds. In addition, crowd capital

can be generated at low cost, with a relatively

low investment. Organizations should consider

the different alternatives to manage efﬁciently

crowdsourcing initiatives.

Conclusion and Future Directions

With the proliferation of the Internet and mobile

technologies, social media and crowdsourcing

offer a wide range of possibilities for business.

Social media builds on the ideological and tech-

nological foundations of Web 2. 0 and user-

generated content: online collaboration, creativ-

ity, and nonprofessional. Social media enhances

business performance via four channels: social

capital, customers’revealed preferences, social

marketing, and corporate social networking.

Crowdsourcing is embedded in social media and

enables organizations to draw knowledge and

resources from disperse online users.

Crowdsourcing builds crowd capital, which

leads to competitive advantages.

Social media and crowdsourcing present excit-

ing avenues and challenges for research and prac-

tice. The wide range of possibilities challenges

organizations when choosing the right medium.

Additionally, social media and crowdsourcing

require a minimum number of users (or critical

mass) to have an effect on business performance.

These online activities require careful planning,

integration, and corporate alignment.

Cross-References

▶Online Corporate Social Networking

▶Social Networks and Entrepreneurship

▶User-generated Information Systems

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Social Media Crowdsourcing 5

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Fragmented Future

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Darcy DiNucci

Participative web and user-created content: Web 2.0 wikis and social networking. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Jan 2007

Graham Vickery
Sacha Wunsch- Vincent

Vickery, Graham, and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent. Participative web and user-created content: Web 2.0 wikis and social networking. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 2007. ISBN 978-92-64-03746-5