Crowdsourcing Tools and IOT Labs

The new media technologies of the Web 2.0 era reshaped the way individuals interact not only with each other but with organizations. In the past two decades, companies opted for engaging the intelligence of online communities to foster business growth through practices such as designing products or solving problems (Brabham, Crowdsourcing. The MIT Press, 2013). With the emergence of Web 3.0, where social media and online interactivity overshadow simple user-generated content of Web 2.0, stimulation of real-world events and the augmentation of existing data is supported by new forms of human interactions (Mansell, Int. J. Commons. 7, 255–277, 2013). The notion of such top-down organizational goals blended with such bottom-up creative process is referred to as “crowdsourcing” (Brabham, Crowdsourcing. The MIT Press, 2013). This chapter provides an introduction to definitions, models, and current “state of the art” overview of the concept of crowdsourcing, giving practical examples of tools and their applications within the Internet of Things (IoT) domain. The chapter also covers Personal Data Protection (PDP) issues related to crowdsourcing. Before presenting the practical realization of crowdsourcing tools (e.g., mobile applications, website, and survey tools) through the example of the U4IoT Horizon 2020 project, the evolution and typology of IoT labs are explained.