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Welcome back to StartupDigest Crowdsourcing, the members-only guide to what you need to read in the crowdsourcing community every week.
 
This week there’s some further bashing of the “crowdsourcing” buzzword, a great interview with the founders at MobileWorks, a new GigWalk style mobile app for mystery shoppers, and the big news this week – a patent lawsuit filed against Kickstarter.

StartupDigest Crowdsourcing is curated by:
Josh Breinlinger – Senior Associate at Sigma Partners
 

Can Crowdsourcing Make a Dent in Unemployment? Ask MobileWorks

By Wade Roush, Xconomy

A good interview with the founders of MobileWorks and how they perceive the crowdsourcing movement contributing to global employment. I’d skip to the interview transcript part.

Stupidest Technology Category Award: “Crowdsourcing”

From SYS-CON Media

Ok, fair enough. The word is over-used, and I don’t follow any strict guidelines as to what I’ll consider crowdsourcing either. The debate continues over the definition and the taxonomy.

Kickstarter Faces Patent Suit Over Funding Idea

By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, PCWorld

Well, at least Kickstarter can afford some good lawyers now. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, especially since there are at least a dozen other crowdfunding sites that the patent holder, Brian Camelio at ArtistShare, could go after.

Brands Winning: GoSpotCheck Reinvents Secret Shopper with Crowd-sourced Missions

From LAUNCH

This is another cool mobile app that lets users earn a bit of cash for doing local work. I like the model from this TechStars graduate that launched publicly a couple months ago.