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Platform Bazaar > Google's Prizes.org
Younomy's Platform Bazaar publishes reviews of social media and online platforms that are used by organizations for running idea contests, developer challenges, open innovation, and social product development.
Google's Prizes.org: The Best Crowdsourcing Solution for Small BusinessesP&G can build pgconnectanddevelop.com, and SAP can setup an innovation pavilion at Innocentive.com to source ideas from over 2,50,000 registered users. But how can a small business or an individual can tap the wisdom of crowds? They can’t build a portal of their own, and even if they do, they cannot build a community. How wonderful it would be, if there is a crowdsourcing platform that you and I can use to source ideas, the way we use a search engine to source information?! We think Google's Prizes.org tries to address this need perfectly.
Product Review
Prizes.org is a crowd sourcing portal for those, who do not have big budgets or technical prowess. In the following three simple steps, you can start crowdsourcing ideas, run idea contests, and developer challenges:
1) Choose a Group There are two groups: Ideas & Advice and Art, Media, Design 2) Choose a Category For each group, there are many categories. For instance, the categories for the Group: Art, Media and Design are: Logo Design, Web Design, Photography, General Design. 3) Give the brief What is the title of the contest, its description, guidelines, official rules, and so on. As its name suggests, Prizes is built around the prize money incentive. So, you have to choose the prize amount for your contests. This means, "you will first need to purchase credits to offer as prizes. You can purchase credits using PayPal's secure payment system or a credit card. One credit costs one dollar ($1.00) USD." Having a valid Paypal account established with Prizes.org is important. Once you log in, you will find a 'Create a Contest' icon at the top of the homepage. Click and enter the title of your contest. Summarize what your contest is about in the 'Description' field, and be sure to include all the information your submitters will need in order to win. You will then be prompted to choose the prize value and the date you'd like your contest to end. Once you are satisfied with your post, click 'Preview and Create.' Pricing: Prizes.org is currently at the beta stage. And we do not know why Google has chosen to launch its services in a .org domain instead of a .com one (maybe, because the dot com domain is already booked by a gaming company?!). The creators of the contest have to buy a minimum number of credit from Google, which will be used to honour the prize money to the solvers. For instance, for any type of business contests, the minimum cash prize is US$ 95, which means you will have to buy 95 credits (each credit costs US$ one) from Google, before you post your crowd sourcing project. Similarly, if you choose to run a "blind contest", where the entries to the contest are visible only to you, and not to the solvers, Google charges you a service charge. However, if you are posting a contest as "Just For Fun" contest, which is a casual and free alternative to regular contests, you do not have to shell out a single dollar. Community Sourcing: Prizes.org is a growing community of solvers. Though the details about the number of registered users are not available, we could be at least ten thousands of registered users, considering the fact that Prizes.org has 8,500 followers at Twitter (@prizes), and about 7,000 fans at Facebook. Any small business or individual can source ideas from the members of Prizes. Community Building: Prizes does not allow you to build a community for your organization as such. However, you can follow the members whom you think are creative. Prizes.org allows you to send messages to (and receive from) the members you follow. Prizes.org is not Innocentive, where companies can have their permanent "pavilions" where they can attract solvers to participate in new contests. In other words, there is less scope to build a community of solvers. Designed for: Prizes.org is designed for crowd sourcing and is ideal for small businesses and individuals. Media File Formats: You can source ideas as text, graphic design file, and video. There are no options for you to source ideas as engineering drawings (CAD) files or software core. Publishing Tools: Solvers can publish their ideas in the above mentioned file formats. They can add comment to the submitted ideas. In addition, they can share their submission and that of others to their social networks, by clicking on the 'Share' Facebook or Twitter link. Action Tools: Solvers can vote the submitted ideas, and even flag them for violation of copyrights, spam, and so on. Profiling levels of participation: You can easily identify the best performers by going through their talent score, winning entries, favorited entries, etc., while participating in the previous contests. Case Example
Boris, a self-employed, created an Art, Media, Design contest under the "Logo Design" category at Prizes, sometime in March, 2012.
His contest description: "My hobby website needs a logo!! It's a blog about gadgets, geek stuff and extraordinary devices. Actually I'm relaunching the site and need a nice logo that's "sexy", classy trendy and has a recognition value. I want a logo that is eye catching but not a duplicate from another site. Visit my site www.mediagadget.de so you will have an idea about the new theme-design and what I am looking for. (The current logo is a dummy from the new theme.)" He announced the prize money of US$ 175. Within about a week's time, he received 93 entries and 327 votes. View all those lovely entries here. Note: This platform review is done based on some of the essential co-creation features as outlined in the book, The Co-creation Roadmap: Six Steps to Tap the Wisdom of Crowds, authored by G Sankaranarayanan, CEO, Younomy.com. A free copy of the book is available for online reading at Issuu. Read on. For a free PDF copy of the book, send a mail.
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