Microsoft's MVP program started in the early 90s and essentially outsourced customer service in forums to thousands of volunteers. In exchange, they receive an

Microsoft's MVP program started in the early 90s and essentially outsourced customer service in forums to thousands of volunteers. In exchange, they receive an MSDN sub they probably already had, some discounts, and a nifty certificate. AOL had a similar program that was even bigger: 14k volunteers. A class-action suit in 1999 argued that they were doing the work of employees (w/ a training program, minimum hours, time cards, and work reports) and they should be compensated as such. AOL immediately started cutting back on the program and 11 years later, AOL settled for $15M. [1] I think any company/org that has crowd-sourced anything is going to tap into the same psyche: people want a sense of being on the "inside," they want to make their mark, and they want the tiniest bit of recognition for their work. Wikipedia has its armies of Wikipedians. Reddit has its Knights of New that voluntarily click on submitted detritus to improve quality. I think Everquest had volunteer game volunteers that served as customer service. I'm sure there are pre-Internet examples of passionate fans helping companies out, but the web sure did ramp it up. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program