I think that the concept of a ‘crowd’ is too vague for it to be defined in terms of numbers. According to age old wisdom, three is a crowd, but would you use the collective wisdom of three people to launch a new product, research your target market or investigate the origins of life?

Probably not. I reckon it depends on your needs. In the Threadless example, the company needs to have a reasonable collection of new designs to present to the public – uploading only one or two for review would be pointless. Only a handful of votes would be equally useless. So, they would need a crowd of substantial size, I would guess that hundreds of people would need to participate to make it worthwhile, but they may feel that anything around 50 is sufficient.

It also depends on the type of crowd that you’re trying to source. A small group of engineering experts (lets say 5) may be more productive than a large group (say 20) if you’re asking for a solution to a specific problem, because any more could result in endless debate, bickering and repetitive cycling of ideas with little progress.

But in truth, I’m just guessing here. I would be interested to know if anyone else has any information that could settle the issue – or simply add fuel to the fire

I found the concept of crowd sourcing interesting and would like to know how big the crowd would have to be for a situation to be classed as ‘crowd sourcing’.

Regards,

Karl