yes, kids...the crowdsourcing sector is now officially "Hot" in 2010.
Google acquired the Aardvark (vark.com) (social-crowdsourced, question-and-answer service) for somewhere around $50MM (it pays to be a former-google employee when you do a start-up :)
Too bad none of that money trickles down to the little elves who power the system... :(
I've used the service and it works surprisingly well. Most responses are relevant and arrive quickly.
The interesting thing here is that in addition to clients, clever execution of a crowdsourced service has a market value (Aardvark is a free service with no advertising).
Google, no doubt, will probably throw advertising content in the mix.
Regarding technical execution, this paper is of geeky interest. It describes how they built the algorithm to intelligently break down questions dole them out to the right Aardvarks in the crowd.
