Cambrian House is a crowdsourcing site which is a site which allows you to help run a business as it lets people give feedback on your ideas, start a business, find developers and designers and they also provide version control for you when you start to develop it. The site is probably most famous for invading the Googleplex and feeding Google staff 1000 pizzas!
The site itself is extremely complicated. At the moment, it’s in the process of being relaunched and has a feeling of being incomplete. For example, the one in-game currency with real value (cambros) can’t be withdrawn easily. The principle of the site is simple, though: to get thoughts on ideas, make businesses and share in the profits.
The site has 4 in-game ‘currencies’: cambros, glory points, royalty points and shares.
Cambros can be transferred between users and have a real life value of $1, but you must email Cambrian House to withdraw them. Users can purchase Cambros (starting at 50 for $50) to give to other members in exchange for their services. Cambrian House also awards cambros on reaching certain milestones. Another currency is glory points, which aren’t transferable.
Glory points are given for actions such as commenting on ideas, rating ideas, contributing in forums or submitting ideas. When you reach a certain amount of glory points, you are rewarded with cambros.
Royalty points are distributed at the discretion of business owners in order to reward work on a project. They could also be used to figure out how you will share profit. Royalty points are transferable because of this.
The final ‘currency’ is stock in Cambrian House. These aren’t transferable and are given at the discretion of a ‘co-op board’. I can’t find it listed on a stock exchange, but every member gets the option of 1 ‘free’ share upon joining.
The site’s design is quite cluttered. As a member pointed out, you can’t even access key features such as a forum in one click. The site tries to look ‘cute’ through its ‘treasure map’-style design; the colours are brown and the various elements of the site are ‘stuck’ together with sticky tape.
The site is very confusing but is a work in progress so it will only get easier to use. I am using it to help co-ordinate development of my latest project.
Tags: crowdsourcing, cambrian house, cambrianhouse, web2.0, web2, web 2.0, web 2, development
I agree that the usability could be improved, what I really like on the other hand is that they add a lot of new coll features each month. I’ve just published an article that goes more into the concept of CH. I wonder what you think of it… http://www.crowdsourcingdirectory.com/?p=14
That’s a lot of pizzas.
I’ve heard of these guys before too, but going into their site I quickly left. You’re right they are very confusing to use.
Good luck with your project.
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