Why blur Group is Important
As blur Group gets more of a following we increasingly get asked why what we are doing is important. It is both a fundamental and complex question to answer. I have spent the last ten years building large communities and marketplaces on the Web – consumer facing, business facing and some that mash both up. The thinking until now has been all about how you scale communities and marketplaces – how you reach critical mass. How you monetize the masses.
We believe that the new wave in community building is about the power of small – the beauty of boutique and about quality more than quantity. Our crowds (communities) are small, focused and valuable. We spend more time managing and filtering our communities than recruiting for them. And our recruitment is rifle shot, not scatter gun. Organic, not viral.
But then we have to, because blur Group is a leader in crowdsourcing – and crowdsourcing is all about monetizing the individual and combined outputs of the crowd. Not cashing in on the crowd itself – quite the opposite. We know that quality crowds equal quality outputs and we will only succeed through quality outputs, whether they come from artists or entrepreneurs or marketers. We work tirelessly with our crowds, supported by social media and community platforms, to help them earn a better living and make a bigger difference – whether they be dedicated, part time or freelance.
Some believe we have figured out how to scale services based businesses, others feel that we might have the secret to Web 2.0 marketplaces and some even think we are quietly and innocently changing the way business is done. Us, we just think we are blur, reinventing tomorrow, today.
