In his book The Wisdom of Crowds (2004), James Surowiecki popularized the notion that, under the right conditions, canvassing the aggregate opinions of many people could be more efficient than relying on the expertise of a few. Jeff Howe applied this approach to decision-making using the buzzword ‘crowdsourcing’ in a Wired article in October 2006. Crowdsourcing assumes that customers know best what they want and need. Hence, more heads are better than one. We discuss why crowdsourcing may fail in a few important situations that concern social media.