The Mini Feeds of Facebook pages up and down the country have been awash with animated faces over the last few days. This weekend saw an NSPCC campaign urging users to change their profile pictures to one of their favourite childhood cartoon characters. The campaign has seen huge press, the Facebook group attracting almost 90,000 [...]

The music industry is in a state of change, with no factor more important than the internet. What with file 2 file sharing sites gaining huge prominence in the early part of this century and the emergence of self promotion sites like MySpace, the industry has had to adapt and change to meet these new, [...]

How do you host an office Christmas party when you have 8,000 staff/Crowdies spread all over the globe? Well, we’ve come up with the answer -  we’re holding our annual knees-up on Twitter this year at #blurParty. It will take place from 4 – 5pm GMT on Thursday 16th December and the coolest stuff will be [...]

At Cloudmade, as providers of mapping technology, we deal in models of the real world. We also support one of the worlds leading Crowdsourcing initiatives – Open Street Map. We provide mobile/Web sdks, tools, web services and applications that use these data models to create customized maps views, routes, relevant search results and other location based [...]

The blur Group blog has always been a bit of Tim Burton fan. We like his take on the unconventional, the wacky and taking everything just that one step further than anybody else… But now he’s only gone and trumped himself by creating a Crowdsourced script via Twitter!

The recent publication of a FastCompany piece “The Future of Advertising” has seen the online platforms abuzz with ideas. The #adfuture hashtag generates tweets aplenty and theories abound covering everything from new payment and reward models, to technology-driven, totally-automated agencies, like a manufacturing conveyor belt with campaigns rolling off on to the palettes. In trying [...]

In 2006, Jeff Howe, a writer at Wired magazine, came up with a new concept for the Internet and he called it Crowdsourcing. He defined Crowdsourcing as the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call. Crowdsourcing [...]

In the first of a series of guest blogs based on the theme of ‘Why Crowdsourcing Is Important To Me’, blur Group is pleased to introduce, Dave Evans. Dave is an experienced Internet and mobile technologist and recently co-founded Somo Interactive mobile advertising agency. 

There are a countless number of technological buzzwords out there which are constantly banded around the internet- and keeping up with them all can be a chore, not to mention bewildering. Some terms are built to last- take Cloud Computing for example. Similarly, the term Crowdsourcing has continued to thrive both as a word and as a strategy.

Fundraising. It’s the purpose of all charity work, the lifeblood that keeps them alive and imperative for their future existence from one year to the next. Charities can rarely afford to rest on their laurels- and especially in choppy economic climes such as these.

Back in June, b-uncut reported on the early stages of the Crowdsourced art scheme- ‘The Johnny Cash Project.’- and as it’s now up and running, we thought we’d bring the story over to our loyal blur Group audience!

This weekend marks the moment where the people of Britain put their clocks back one hour to welcome the beginning of darker and colder evenings… That’s a bit negative, so we thought we’d turn the clocks back and give you a flavour of what has been happening at blur Group  over the past fortnight!

There’s something going on in agency land. The tectonic plates seem to be shifting. Some say a revolution is under foot. Clients are looking for something new. Big brands are voting with their feet and backing the Crowdsourced Creative Agency.

Has there ever been a more dangerous (not to mention ground-breaking) Crowdsourced venture than Wikileaks? The stakes are high and the risks involved for Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, and the many groups of people attempting to infiltrate data behind security lines, are enormous.

Just a little video interview with Philip Letts, the founder and CEO of blur Group. Find out more about  what we do, where we’re going and the world of Crowdsourcing…

Remember FashionStake? They’re the Crowdsourced fashion start-up who are attempting to change the way consumers conduct their online shopping. FashionStake present items from their selected designers in a series of ‘trunk shows’, and if consumers like them, they can place direct orders for them while they on sale.

BEWARE – this blog is about us. But then, we think we deserve it. A few weeks ago the marketing services world was shocked to discover that blur Group was ranked as the worlds 7th largest Creative Agency. WHAT? WHO? CHEEEEKY! Since then we’ve been swamped with brands and SME’s wanting to use our Crowds [...]

If it aint broke, don’t fix it- at least that’s how the saying goes. And high-street retailer, Gap, could have certainly done with a bit of common sense advice prior to launching their new company brand logo.

Where were we? Ah, yes, autumn. It’s been a busy few weeks folks. Two London Underground tube strikes, a couple of working briefs with our friends at Paddy Power, a visit from the Pope and we gained a number seven placing in the Campaigns 2010 Agency rankings!

Yo! As many of y’all know blur Group just hit da Campaigns listing of Top 10 Creative Agencies worldwide. That’s right. That’s wild. That’s RAP! And that’s one milestone a down bros. So as yo next gig we produce’d this worlds first Crowdsourcing Rap. Ja homies. So here goes – dig:

Crowdsourcing has officially moved from Web fad to Web trend. Which means that in a couple of years everyone will be doing it. There are 7 secrets to really successful Crowdsourcing. Or at least we think there are. 1. Understand clearly what Crowdsourcing is. Start with Jeff Howe’s definition (after all he coined the term).

Outsourcing is based on the concept of work as globalisation. Next came Open-source- the concept of working externally. And then Crowdsourcing discovered the concept of working socially. All these models share a few things in common- formulas designed to reduce business costs, budgets and expand the geographical locations of the workforce.  

Campaigns Top 10 Creative Agency Ranking has just been released and blur Group debuts at No 7. We’re flattered. To quote: “… most of the creative agencies in our 2010 Top 10 are smaller than they were two years ago. Only one breaks the mould. And they were not even around two years ago.

The BBC has just reported that the UK’s RSPB has Crowdsourced 90,000 volunteers to report on Hedgehog spottings in the UK. It reveals that 25% of UK gardens get hedgehogs dropping by on a monthly basis. Those little critters!

We’ve been given a sneak look at the latest agency rankings due out next week from a well known marketing magazine. It lists the worlds largest ad agencies. And it will have the industry reeling. blur Group comes in 7th. This is a bit cheeky but we think it’s OK to spill a few beans [...]