Syntaxtual Healing

If you've ever collaborated on anything on the internet, you've been a part of what is commonly known as crowdsourcing. When your friend posts on Facebook asking for advice on what new phone to get (as I did recently) or when you share a post from your favorite charity or encourage others to share in the success of a task (raising money, raising awareness, helping another person with a challenge). Essentially, the majority of what we do with social media involves some form of crowdsourcing on a regular basis.

Delving into crowdsourcing a bit, I found a few common forms, that logically work in many social media settings. Crowdvoting - exactly what it sounds - this ties into my Facebook example above, and is also how sites like threadless.com choose new shirt designs. Wisdom of the crowd is similar - perhaps more fitting to my Facebook example - in that it aggregates opinions and data, more so than just a straight vote. Another huge example is crowdfunding - this ties into my charity example, and is even more easily exemplified by Kickstarter. Kickstarter allows anyone to post an idea - from an invention to a creative endeavor to...anything really - and allows users to contribute to the success of the project. Typically, there are incentives - ie, if you donate $10, you'll get a copy of final product, but if you donate $1000, they'll fly you to the launch party and give you a bunch of swag (and of course a copy of the final product). The success of the funding of the project depends entirely on the crowd deciding, as a group, that it is worthwhile to fund (and perhaps sharing the project with friends to increase the possibility of full funding).

Back in December, I joined a new crowdsourcing endeavor created by a group of bloggers that I have followed off and on for a few years - GoMighty.com. Go Mighty is part social site, part crowdsource, and part personal goal management. I won't try to describe it better than they can, but will encourage you to check out the site, find out more about it, and if you're interested, sign up. What Go Mighty comes down to is you can share your goals and stories, and not only can people comment or suggest ways that you can achieve your goals, there is another component that makes Go Mighty unique--sponsors. You can share your life goals, share stories, and if you're lucky and your goal is something that interests a sponsor, they might help fund part of your goal.

Before I go any further, I just want to say that I am not getting anything from Go Mighty (yet, wink wink) to write this.

Anyway. I signed up in December, and I threw a few goals up there. Nothing too exciting. But since the new year, rather than making some boring old resolutions, I've turned to Go Mighty. I've added some goals, and some stories, and I've even gotten some crowdsource feedback on one of my goals. In fact, I've even achieved one of my goals (need to get on there and update that one). I like the accountability of having a goal up on Go Mighty, and even more so I like that the goals can be as simple as learning to sew or go to the movies once a month to as complex as climbing mountains, writing memoirs - anything you can dream up. 

I didn't really have much of a goal with this post, other than to make you all aware of Go Mighty. Even if it's not your thing, remember that crowdsourcing is an excellent tool, but always something to keep in perspective. You're asking for the opinions or support from a large array of people, and while you might not agree with every opinion you get, most of the time you will get some well thought out ideas. Unless all your friends are generally belligerent, in which case you might want to crowdsource some strangers instead.

As mentioned, I got nothing from Go Mighty for writing this, but if you want to check out my goals, you can do so here. If you do sign up, follow me and I'll follow you, and maybe we can help each other reach some goals this year!