Crowdsourcing is the implementation of certain ideas and tasks with the help of a wide circle of people who are not united by an employment contract. Participants in crowdsourcing are volunteers and enthusiasts, for whom the reward is the participation in the project itself. Using crowdsourcing, companies can solve a wide range of tasks. For example, a company has launched a new product and asks its audience to test it to gather information about its shortcomings. In this case, people act as free testers and help improve the product. Sometimes companies pay for such activities - often banks reward those who find vulnerabilities in their systems.
The most famous example of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia. The portal is administered and filled exclusively by volunteers from all over the world. They do not receive any funds for this and work solely for the sake of the idea on a voluntary basis. A similar phenomenon is also often found in startups, when people help implement a project of interest to them and perform certain tasks set by the startup author. Thus, crowdsourcing becomes similar to crowdfunding - another crowdsourcing technology that involves implementing a project by collecting funds from a wide circle of people.
