You have heard about crowdsourcing for funds. Now satellite company DigitalGlobe is hoping to use crowdsourcing to help locate missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The company, which has an archive of satellite images covering more than 4 billion sq km, is using its Tomnod crowdsourcing platform (http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014?source=malaysia) to help in the search.

Volunteers are assigned a batch of satellite images to examine and asked to pin or tag possible signs of plane wreckage, life rafts, oil spills or any interesting or suspicious objects.

The company announced its initiative on Monday, saying two of its commercial satellites have already collected images comprising roughly 1,988 sq miles of the South China Sea where the plane disappeared.

The response to the call was so great that the website crashed, with some 25,000 people signing up to help. The company's analysts will go through the volunteers' tags and forward any findings to the authorities.