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I’ve noticed a growing trend in the web towards crowd-oriented applications e.g. websites that allow groups of people to make various decisions and work together. An obvious example would be wikipedia but I’m talking here more about real crowd-buying applications like e.g. CrowdStorm which is soon going to roll out new version of their site, or HalfShare which took the concept of crowd-shopping to the extreme when it comes to the object that we are actually purchasing… (a house).

The first site - CrowdStorm - is letting users build a wiki/community-style content over a database of products, and find those which generate the most “buzz”. The purchase action however, is performed by yourself alone. You only get “influenced” e.g. by recommendations of others etc. The “crowd” in the name is then only helping you chose what to buy. “Informing” is therefore a stage one of “crowd”-oriented web.

The second website however, takes the concept one step forward, by letting you find other people interested in investing in properties (second / summer houses), e.g. you might not have enough money to invest in a second house on a booming market on your own, BUT you and 10 other people could handle it together - and if you then sell the property in 10 years time, all of you will make a profit. In a way - allowing users to buy something together, is therefore a stage two of “crowd”-oriented web.

What I’m interested in however, is how this concept of “crowd-shopping” starts to resemble a classic concept of public companies or investments companies (like VCs). We seek informations based on authority of others and “experts’ “analysis of markets trends (newspapers, technical analysis etc.), then we invest capital into our crowd-fractional-property (whatever it is), and hope to sell it with a profit within some time. We don’t really own the object of the purchase, nor we bound ourselves with it emotionally - investing in equities of public companies is all crowd-based, social way to make profit for all interested parts (investors).

Shouldn’t then, the next step after “Crowd-shopping” as presented in HalfShare.com be “crowd investing” where e.g. people (private investors) would vote online and invest in any business ventures they are interested in - and capital seekers could present their idea and try to raise seed capital in exchange for shares in their business?

Crowd-VC? And why not.

Today I’ve read an interesting blog entry from Ryan Carson in which he preach long-term outsourcing and building offshore teams rather than hiring freelancers on “fixed project” base.

As its usually the case with the blogs, what was even more interesting, was what various readers wrote as their comments to this post. Some were saying he shouldn’t trust his russian developers. Some other (UK freelancers) were saying that outsourcing his work to Russia was almost a national threat. Finally lots of people asked about communication issues etc. In short, as usual, everyone seems to be divided into those who fully agree and those who fully disagree.

I don’t want to comment on the fact that Ryan actually outsourced his work out of UK to some high quality Russian folks (although I think it was an excellent business decision), but I do want to add my bit on why hiring freelancers is not always a great idea.

Computer software and web 2.0 software especially is a complex thing. What more, its a thing that is constantly changing  - all the time. People tends to think that writing web software is like composing songs - its an act limited in time (an costs). You compose a song, then you are finished and you don’t have to go back t0 it. It’s done. Unfortunately, with today’s web applications it’s a different story - things CHANGE all the time. External APIs get updated, server-side libraries get updates, even the programming language versions progress and eventually expire (forcing you to update the  whole app). Building web applications is not like composing songs - it’s more like building house in a permanent storm. You do progress, and you can build something real - but you should be prepared for the never-ending stream of bug-fixing, updating, changing etc.

THAT is exactly the main reason why I think hiring freelancers isn’t the best way to build web business. Freelancers by the very definition of freelancing wants to get short-term jobs, contracts. They don’t want to stay with your company forever, and help you keep it all up and working. They want one-off job, and then they move to the next client. That’s why its millions time better to actually build a long-term team, to know that you have some people out there, someone who will work for you when you need them and not only when they need your money.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t actually matter if your team if off-site or in-house. What does matter that you have a team - and not just a bunch of freelancers. If you have money to spend on in-house team, or if you decided to try to build your team offshore - doesn’t really matter! (Although building offshore teams is a whole different story which I will comment on in a separated post quite soon).