Earlier in the year, I wrote an article about Technology Crowdsourcing. There is a new player in this space named TrustRadius.
The talented Vinay Bhagat and his team have created a unique platform which compiles software reviews sourced from product experts. Key differentiators in this new platform include:
- TrustRadius is really focused on trying to source in-depth insights from primary product users/ experts
- The reviews of TrustRadius are structured, and soon will be able to be added to, and amended over time. Structure allows for curation into things like comparisons.
They were launched in May and were funded by the Mayfield Fund in July and are rapidly starting to scale. So far, they have 23k monthly visitors and are growing at 30% per month.
For interested higher education folks, I’ve posted a few reviews there that you may find interesting:
Robert Goodman 
Really interesting Robert, thanks!
I think that you would be really interested in some recent research that I have come across about crowds and citizen science. In particular I feel you may find these two emerging pieces of research very relevant:
– The Theory of Crowd Capital
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2193115
– The Contours of Crowd Capability
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2324637
Powerful stuff!