Collaborative Practice Paradigm Shift in the Web

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5.1.2. Applying Co-service in the Web

This research found that crowdservicing is a reflection of co-service in the Web.

The description and characteristics of crowdservicing from the reviewed literature strongly reflect the characteristics of co-service. Namely, the idea of crowdservicing as a collaborative practice reflect to the characteristics of co-service including root-up, have “x for x” relationship, emphasize on creating social and experience values, recursive iterations between collective and connective collaboration, and function in a decentralized environment. Therefore, the hypothesis previously made in this study that crowdservicing is related to co-service is proven. Essentially, crowdservicing is a special case of co-service under the condition that co-service is practiced in the World Wide Web with loosely coupled participating agents.

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This research has identified the differences in characteristics between crowdsourcing and crowdservicing from the interview results and the reviewed literatures. In addition, this research has associated the difference in characteristic of the two mass collaborative practice applications with the difference in the Web’s environment supporting each individual practice. Since crowdservicing is viewed as the next evolutionary collaborative practice in the Web after crowdsourcing, the research will derive a logical transition requirements and processes that describe such change from crowdsourcing into crowdservicing.

5.2.1. Differentiating Crowdsourcing and Crowdservicing

From the interview results and reviewed literatures, this research has identified a few key differentiating characteristics between crowdsourcing and crowdservicing. These differentiating characteristics are summarized in Table 5.2.

Crowdservicing and Crowdsourcing differ greatly in terms of the collaboration initiatives and environment. Crowdservicing is a strictly root-up collaborative practice, while crowdsourcing may not be. Many forms of crowdsourcing involve a cooperative distribution of task to the participating agents which resonates more

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with the top-down organization concept. However, as a special case of co-service, crowdservicing is initiated and supported by root-up collaboration initiatives. From this, it is apparent that crowdservicing is strictly a collaborative practice while crowdsourcing may not be. From this, it is also apparent that crowdservicing functions under a decentralized environment whereas crowdsourcing may not be so.

For instance, in the scenarios with cooperative distribution of task, crowdsourcing relies on a centralized organization and environment to distribute task and collect participating agents’ contributions. Since crowdsourcing may rely on a centralized organization and environment to initiate and collect cooperatively distributed tasks, Crowdsourcing may require an active platform that periodically initiates the interaction between the “crowd” and the platform. However, crowdservicing can be sustained on a passive platform once the adequate interaction mechanism for the crowd is constructed. Since crowdsourcing can be a reflection of distributive cooperation, feedback mechanisms may not be required. However, since crowdservicing is a collaborative practice, feedback mechanisms that facilitate a more efficient and effective collaboration between decentralized individual participating agents is required.

The difference in collaboration approach between crowdsourcing and crowdservicing is one of the defining differences between the two collaborative practices on the Web. This discussion focuses on the collaborative portion of crowdsourcing and does not include the cooperative portion of crowdsour cing.

Crowdsourcing is a collective collaboration effort that contributes “onto” a platform.

It is a practice of collaborating “with” the platform and other participating agents.

Crowdservicing on the other hand is a collaboration made possible by recursive iterations between collective and connective collaboration with emphasis on developing the connective collaboration. It is a practice of collaborating “with” other participating agents and the platform “for” oneself, other participating agents and the platform. Essentially crowdsourcing is collaborating upon a platform while crowdservicing is collaborating on and upon a platform.

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May not be decentralized, sometimes centralized

Decentralized

Can be cooperative and collaborative Strictly collaborative

Strictly collective collaboration Recursive iterations between collective and connective collaboration

May need an active platform Can be sustained on a passive platform Platform may not need a feedback

mechanism

Platform must have strong feedback mechanism

Collaborating upon a platform Collaborating on and upon a platform

Table 5.2.: A summary of the differentiating characteristics between crowdsourcing and crowdservicing

5.2.2. Changes in the Collaborative Practice Environment

Since this study limits crowdsourcing and crowdservicing within the Web’s environment, the changes in the Web’s environment would reflect directly to the changes in the collaborative practice environment. From the interview results and reviewed literatures, crowdsourcing is a collaborative practice that resonates strongly with the Web 2.0 environment and crowdservicing is resonates with the Web 2.5 environment and is slowly migrating to and converging with the Web 3.0 environment. To analyze how the Web’s transition corresponds with the change transition from crowdsourcing to crowdservicing, the four techno-social processes were examined in detail.

As the Web shift towards its next evolutionary phase after Web 2.0, the changes in cognition have triggered crowdservicing to emerge. The introduction of Semantics or information with meaning has enabled collaboration to be more effective. Contributed data can now be assigned with meaning and is now more

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closely connected. This implies an enhancement in the connective collaboration which may later enhance the recursive iteration collaboration process. This would imply and evolution from crowdsourcing to crowdservicing since now the recursive iteration collaboration process is made possible by the Semantics technology that has changed cognition.

The Web has constant technological refinements that enable a more convenient and effective communication. Such enhancement of communication can facilitate the communication demands that intense co-service requires. Therefore, as a special case of co-service, crowdservicing is enabled by the refinement of the Web’s communication technology. From this, it is apparent that a progression in the Web’s communication made the transition from crowdsourcing to crowdservicing possible.

Although cooperation is not directly related to the changes in the Web’s environment, the enhancement the Web’s communication environment has enabled a more effective cooperation. Since cooperation is a practice incurred from the crowdservicing co-service collaborative practices, relationship between the changes in the cooperation environment cannot be directly associated to the transitional relationship between crowdsourcing and crowdservicing.

Although collaboration is not directly related to the changes in the Web’s environment, the enhancement the Web’s cognition and communication environment has enabled more effective and different forms of collaboration. The Web not only has progressed to facilitate more convenient and efficient cognition and communication, it has changed the way cognition and communication functions.

The Web environment can now facilitate connective collaboration between the participating agents because the collaborated content are now more connected via the Semantics technology. Furthermore, as communication is enhanced, the feedback mechanism on a platform can be built to be more effective, which would also facilitate connective collaboration. Therefore, the transition from crowdsourcing to crowdservicing is not directly related to the changes in the Web’s collaboration environment; instead, this transition is related to the to the Web’s

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collaboration environment due to the innate relationship between cognition, communication, cooperation and collaboration.

5.2.3. Shifting from Crowdsourcing to Crowdservicing

Since the technologies that support crowdservicing are now available, the key focus of how a crowdsourcing initiative can transit into a crowdservicing initiative will not be on the collaborative environment’s progression. In other words, to examine how a crowdsourcing initiative can transit into a crowdservicing initiative, the progression of the Web’s environment is of little significance since the Web already incorporated technologies that can facilitate and support crowdservicing.

The focus then turns to how the crowdsourcing characteristics can converge with the crowdservicing characteristics. This is illustrated through the Supporting Secondary Case Study between Yahoo! Answers and Quora, where Yahoo! Answer represents an example of crowdsourcing and Quora represents an example of crowdservicing. Although this study provides a simplified vision of how crowdsourcing can shift to crowdservicing, this study will provide highlights that bring insights to some of the required key transition process from crowdsourcing to crowdservicing.

Yahoo! Answers is an example of crowdsourcing platforms that have a defective root-up characteristic; therefore, for a crowdsourcing platform like Yahoo! Answer to shift to crowdservicing, it needs to incorporate mechanisms that facilitate for better root-up initiatives. For example, a mechanism that allows participating agents with converging interest to connect will initiate a root-up collaboration initiative. In addition, Yahoo! Answers’ decentralization environment is problematic due to its distributive nature. Although such platforms appear to be decentralized, but communication between participating agents is dysfunctional, thus creating an ineffective decentralized environment. For platforms like Yahoo! Answers to shift towards crowdservicing from crowdsourcing, it needs to enable a more effective decentralized environment by providing a more passive platform with a strong feedback mechanism that enables more interaction between the participating

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agents. Although transforming a cooperative crowdsourcing initiative into a collaborative crowdservicing initiative may involve more complex procedures and mechanism, a transition to a decentralized platform with strong mechanism that can attract root-up initiatives may enable the possibility for a cooperative crowdsourcing initiative to transform into a collaborative crowdservicing initiative.

By enabling a platform that facilitates connection, crowdsourcing can be shifted to the next evolutionary collaboration practice, crowdservicing. From the secondary case study, one of the key differences that Quora has with Yahoo! Answers is simply the editing and commenting mechanisms by others on an answer. This enables the participating agents to connect and elaborated on the collected content, which in turn would provide the possibility for the recursive iteration between collective and connective collaboration to occur. By adding such simple mechanism that facilitate connective collaboration, Quora is able provide more accurate answers compared to Yahoo! Answers, which may generate more social and experience values that would result in creating more monetary values.