There are silly feuds and then there’s the crowdSpring vs. Threadless vs. “Spec Work is Evil.”  At South by SouthWest (SXSW if you’re kewl) panel “Is Spec Work Evil?” a three-way fight occurred.  First, you have all the designers who hate doing speculative work (i.e., you’re basically handing in a project and hoping the client accepts it and pays you) yelling at the designers who managed to get paid by doing spec work.  Second, while it isn’t featured as part of the official video, crowdSpring representatives accused Threadless of being a “work on spec” site and Threadless took great offense to both that and crowdSpring comparing themselves to Threadless.  And then the Internet, especially Twitter, start a great to-do about nothing.

Good lord, what a silly waste of time.  By the numbers: (more…)

You’ve likely heard of crowdSPRING by now.  They made quite the splash by winning WIRED’s Small Biz Program contest.   crowdSPRING is a crowdsourcing business.  You might even say they got their funding via crowdsourcing, since the money came from more than 10 different angel investors.  Crowdsourcing you ask?  OK, let’s cut the buzzword bingo game and call crowdSPRING for what it is: contract outsourcing crossed with American Idol. (more…)