Major products
- Facebook and Twitter - content moderation
- Twitter - Clockwork Raven
- Google Translate - driven by Translate Communities
- Google Maps - via MapMaker and Waze (acquired for $1.3 billion)
- Google Books - via reCAPTCHA (university project acquired by Google)
- Amazon - Mechanical Turk
- Microsoft Bing - via Appen Butler Hill
- Microsoft Translator - via Lionbridge, Clickworker, and Appen Butler Hill
- Apple Maps - via Locationary and Hopstop
- US Postal Service - reading handwritten addresses
Big companies tend to keep internal processes and architectures private, so this list is undoubtedly incomplete.
Patents held by big companies:
Crowd-powered companies
- Mechanical Turk - microtask
- Alegion - microtask
- Appen - microtask
- ClickWorker - microtask
- Clockwork Raven - microtask
- CloudFactory - microtask
- CrowdFlower - microtask
- CrowdSource - microtask
- LeadGenius - microtask, lead generation
- Lionbridge - microtask
- MicroTask - microtask
- MicroWorkers - microtask
- MiniJobz.com - microtask
- Samasource - microtask, workforce extension
- ShortTask - microtask
- TaskUs - microtask
- SecureTask - microtask with privacy
- JobBoy - microtask, physical or virtual
- Speechpad - transcription
- CastingWords - transcription
- FancyHands - virtual assistant
- MyTasker - virtual assistant
- EAHelp - virtual assistant
- Zirtual - virtual assistant
- Fiverr - freelancing
- Upwork - freelancing (fka oDesk and Elance)
- Freelancer - freelancing
- Witmart - freelancing (aka Zhubajie)
- Zhubajie - freelancing (aka Witmart)
- Scripted - freelancing, writing
- Arise - customer service, call center
- LiveOps - customer service, call center, aka LiveWork
- Needle - customer service
- Anydoor dba Conyak - translation
- Duolingo - translation
- Babelverse - translation of live conversation
- Gengo - translation
- Lingohub - translation of software, localization
- Lingotek - translation
- SpeakLike - translation of social media and web sites
- Transfluent - translation of social media, games, etc
- VerbalizeIt - translation of live conversation
- Viki - fan translation of tv shows, movies, etc
- InnoCentive - ideation with bounties
- Be-Novative - ideation
- Chaordix - ideation
- eYeka - ideation
- IdeaScale - ideation
- Kluster - ideation
- Polisofia - ideation, Spanish
- Springleap - advertising
- Tongal - advertising?
- Adtriboo - advertising, graphic design, video production
- 99designs - graphic design
- B12 - web design
- DesignCrowd - graphic design
- Minted - graphic design
- Crowdzu - graphic design
- Qukku - video production
- VoiceBunny - voice recording
- FanFootage - live video
- Snapwire - photography
- TapShield - public safety
- Zeef - information retrieval
- ImageBrief - photography
- Kanga - local delivery
- Mobee - retail analytics
- Roamler - retail analytics
- Locu - marketing, restaurant data
- Crowdmark - grading for schools
- RecruitLoop - recruiting
- RecruitiFi - recruiting
- BountySource - programming
- Crowdcurity - security audits, software testing
- TaskRabbit - chores
- Uber - local transporation
- Waze - traffic prediction
- Darjeelin - flight planning
- Tagasauris - photo tagging
- Top Image Systems - document processing
- Qualtrics - surveys
- Workfusion - data collection and enrichment
For more, search CrunchBase for terms such as “crowdsourcing”, “freelancing”, “task management”, “collaboration”, and “outsourcing”. Then read the description, look at the company's web site, or search around to determine if their operations actually the bill.