In those cases where people are creating or buying new, crowdsourcing can be problematic because now the cost/benefit analysis has to ultimately, in the long run, come out in the positive.

I’ve written and talked a lot about this recently. See these blog entries.
http://networkmusings.blogspot.com/2010/07/tapping-end-user-content-20-for-speed.html

Contrary to that then was my photography example – whereby photographers can’t necessarily take a subset of their skill – like composition, depth of field, aperture selection, various post-production techniques, etc…to directly make them extra money. It’s still all photography.

I think Illustrators are less likely to get “overtaken” by amateurs due to it being an art that needs to be developed over time. Photography (and maybe writing too) are more prone to aspects like being at the right location at the right time, luck, reading up on technique, etc…

And you hit the nail on the head…I might have pessimistically been forecasting a trend shift. But you nailed it with “yet”. Hopefully like Warren said, companies will not start “neglecting the needs of the crowd over self-gratifying needs of the company”.

Personally as a company (Napkin Labs) that acknowledges the importance of passion and each community members satisfaction of our platform and innovation experience, I say let these companies continue to operate as they stubbornly do and let natural selection weed out their malpractices.

Survival of the fittest. The crowd knows best.

Second, I really don’t think the industry is at the point now where people can’t get jobs in writing and photography because of crowdsourcing. Threadless is a great example of this as well. We have a staff photographer and a staff writer with no plans to outsource those positions to the crowd. Most shops are not at the point that they want to do that yet. The impact crowdsourcing has had on the industry so far that I’ve seen is that places that could not afford a photographer or writer before are now able to get some of that done. I argue that the big guys haven’t changed their ways in a meaningful way to hurt the industry yet.

Most of your users are very talented graphics folks who have a variety of skills – one of which being cool vector art. They make a living with all their talents – and spend their free time expressing their ‘passion’ and supplement their income via one aspect of what makes them great.

I would argue that professional photographers and writers rely more heavily on a core talent which is obviously writing and photography. If other amateur writers and photographers (iStockphoto and Associated Content) continue to crowdsource their work – these true professionals will find their opportunities dwindling – and find that permanent positions are being eliminated, and contract positions being farmed out to the cheapest source.

Threadless artists are true artists “working on the side”. They are most often professional graphics folks that do not feel any competition from potential amateurs.

The above mentioned photographers and writers do – however. My brother-in-law is an unemployed (now freelance) writer who can’t find work and is relying on the desire of industry professionals not to contribute to these ‘hack job’ crowdsourcing options that don’t pay well and dilute the options for actual talented people.

Using my previous example about Threadless folks taking one aspect of their talent – I mentioned ‘vector art’. It’s not like professional writers and photographers can use one minor skill to supplement their income – like aperture selection or grammar usage to make an extra dime.

I wonder if a further way to identify “bad” versus “good” (using the terms loosely) crowdsourcing models is to look at the overall health of the community. If the community is growing and you can find old members as excited to be a part of it as new members, something positive is happening. If, however, there is a higher reliance on new community members to carry the load for members that have burned out or left dissatisfied, then the model is probably a negative one.

Ever community (or crowd) will have some churn, but the good ones should grow and open up new opportunities for their members along the way.