Macrotasking is a type of

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...

that is distinct from microtasking. Macrotasks typically have the following characteristics: *they can be done independently *they take a fixed amount of time *they require special skills Microtasking projects can also be small pieces of a much larger whole, which workers never see, while macrotasks could be part of a large, visible project where workers pitch in wherever they have the required skills.Download the top crowdsourcing infographics – Infographics – Umbrella of Crowdsourcing
/ref> A macrotask might be the creation of an analytical paper or a video, or the pursuit of a contest like the

Netflix Prize The Netflix Prize was an open competition for the best collaborative filtering algorithm to predict user ratings for films, based on previous ratings without any other information about the users or films, i.e. without the users being identified e ...

, while a microtask could include the editing of a document for grammar or transcription of a video. A number of sites connect people with freelancers who can fulfill macrotasks, like

Fiverr Fiverr is a global online marketplace for freelance services. Fiverr’s platform connects freelancers (sellers) to people or businesses looking to hire (buyers). Listings on Fiverr are diverse and range from "get a well-designed business card" ...

Upwork Upwork Global Inc., formerly Elance-oDesk, is an American freelancing platform headquartered in Santa Clara and San Francisco, California. The company was formed in 2013 as Elance-oDesk, after the merger of Elance Inc. and oDesk Corp. The merg ...

(ex

Elance Upwork Global Inc., formerly Elance-oDesk, is an American freelancing platform headquartered in Santa Clara and San Francisco, California. The company was formed in 2013 as Elance-oDesk, after the merger of Elance Inc. and oDesk Corp. The merg ...

and

oDesk Upwork Global Inc., formerly Elance-oDesk, is an American freelancing platform headquartered in Santa Clara and San Francisco, California. The company was formed in 2013 as Elance-oDesk, after the merger of Elance Inc. and oDesk Corp. The merg ...

) . Companies like Sparked and Radmatter have commercial products which can be used for macrotasking. The Department of State has a crowd-work platform called th
Virtual Student Foreign Service
where employees can post macro and micro tasks for student interns to accomplish.

References

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Sources

Crowdsourcing For Dummies – David Alan Grier
* Becker, J.D.; (et al.
Parallelism, Learning, Evolution: Workshop on Evolutionary Models and Strategies, Neubiberg, Germany, March 10-11, 1989. Workshop on Parallel Processing: Logic, Organization, and Technology - WOPPLOT 89, Wildbad Kreuth, Germany, July 24-28, 1989. Proceedings
Crowdsourcing