Crowd

Typology

Nicholas Carr's fourfold typology of Crowds [1]:

Social production crowd

consists of a large group of individuals who lend their distinct talents to the creation of some product like Wikipedia or Linux.

Averaging crowd

acts essentially as a survey group, providing an average judgment about some complex matter that, in some cases, is more accurate than the judgment of any one individual (the crowd behind prediction markets like the Iowa Electronic Markets, not to mention the stock market and other financial exchanges).

Data mine crowd

a large group that, through its actions but usually without the explicit knowledge of its members, produces a set of behavioral data that can be collected and analyzed in order to gain insight into behavioral or market patterns (the crowd that, for instance, feeds Google's search algorithm and Amazon's recommendation system).

Networking crowd

a group that trades information through a shared communication system such as the phone network or Facebook or Twitter.

Transactional crowd

Clay Shirky, who is also participating in the discussion, suggested a fifth crowd type for this list:

"Transactional crowd": a group used to instigate and coordinate what are mainly or solely point-to-point transactions, such as the type of crowd gathered by Match.com, eBay, Innocentive, LinkedIn and similar services. (I would think that contests like the Netflix Prize also fall into this category.)"

Event crowd

A group organized through online communication for a particular event, which can take place either online or in the real world and may have a political, social, aesthetic, or other purpose." (http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2010/03/a_typology_of_c.php)

More Information

1. Crowdsourcing