Towards Social Crowd Environments Using Service-Oriented Architectures

Abstract

Abstract Crowdsourcing has emerged as an important paradigm of human problem solving techniques on the Web. More often than noticed, organizations outsource tasks to humans which cannot be processed by software. In this work we demonstrate the application of service-oriented architectures (SOA) for enterprise crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing applications typically utilize the capabilities of people in open and dynamic Web-based systems. We extend this concept and introduce knowledge crowds where crowd members collaborate in context of joint tasks. Interactions in such environments are performed using software services. Such highly dynamic socio-technical environments, however, demand for flexible interaction models due to varying interaction styles of people and services. Our main contribution centers around the convergence of process artifacts and emerging social structures. Here, we present the implementation of a real world example, a human assisted image processing service that is provided by a knowledge crowd. We discuss the foundational building blocks for realizing the design, execution, and adaptation of service-oriented crowdsourcing applications.