We’ve all heard of ‘crowdsourcing’ but ‘friendsourcing’ was new to me …

I’ve already mentioned the conference I attended this past weekend that was, I’ll go ahead and say it …, amazing, thought-provoking, wonderful. (SobCon – a conference for entrepreneurs, bloggers, businesses and non-profits doing business online. Here’s my SobCon recap as well as one lesson from SobCon on gratitude that is well worth sharing.)

I also already mentioned Tim Sanders, author of “Today We Are Rich” (and three other wonderful books). He shares so many powerful ideas when he speaks, that I had to pass along this inspiration from him …

He talked about how we don’t need to ‘crowdsource’ but rather, we should ‘friendsource.’ We should allow our friends ‘influence’ instead of complete strangers. And, it makes sense. Don’t we really care what our friends think and value their opinions?

I like this definition of ‘friend-sourcing’ that I found on Word Spy:

Jeff Howe has promoted the term crowdsourcing, which emphasize the potential of internet communities in developing knowledge. Friendsourcing in some way can be seen as opposition to crowdsourcing. Friendsourcing is based on the potential of relatively small networks of friends, which have similar interests and common professions. There is no wisdom of the crowd, but wisdom of a carefully collected network of people, which becomes a high quality source of information.
—Marcin Wilkowski, “Friendsourcing on Twitter (for academic purposes),” Historia i Media, September 30, 2009

“Wisdom of a carefully collective network of people, which becomes a high quality source of information.”

I love that about girlfriends. We share our lives – the highs and lows, good times and bad, ideas and dreams with each other. We allow our friends to be our ‘inner circle’ – the valuable, respected and supportive ‘influencers’ “carefully collected network of people.”

‘Friendsourcing’ is just another way to describe the goal of Girlfriendology – to bring women together in a supportive community where we share ‘girlfriend advice’ – aka: friendsourcing.

On our BlogTalkRadio show/podcasts we’ve interviewed over 200 wise women with advice on careers, cruising, couponing, cooking and more. We’ve started our own eBook/audio book/webinar program (aka: Girlfriendology Guides) to share the wisdom of women and will be bringing you more helpful information that we share among girlfriends. We publish guest blogs and update our Twitter and Facebook friends on helpful (and hopefully inspiring) post, links and women. And we often get the great stories and ideas from our online and social media girlfriends to share here on Girlfriendology – thanks so much!

Next time you need some advice – ideas for your book title, questions on your spring garden, fashion/shopping assistance, creative ways to cut your budget – why not ask a girlfriend or a bunch of them for their recommendations? Why not collect the wisdom of a carefully collective network of people? Try your own ‘friendsourcing’ then share your story back here on Girlfriendology.

p.s. Here’s a story of social media friendsourcing for a girlfriend in a sad situation. When have you ‘friendsourced’ to help out one of your friends?