Amazon—yes the place you buy books from—has a cool service called the Mechanical Turk. It’s a system that enables people to complete online tasks (“HITS”) such as tagging, classifying, searching, grading, and transcribing. For example, you could pay people to do tasks such as:
The minimum that a “requestor” can charge for a HIT is $.005. Amazon collects an additional 10% from the requestor. Requestors can specify the qualifications necessary for people to work on HITs and can pay bonuses for good work. Payments are made as soon as the requestor approves the HIT’s results.
Some people will make the case that this will create online sweatshops, but I think it’s a very interesting way for companies to efficiently get this sort of work done and for people to work flexibly without commuting. I give it a big thumb’s up, and my respect for Amazon has increased because they are trying something that’s unrelated to schlepping books. I’m dying to try it. Maybe I’ll pay people to delete the forthcoming comments about how this is exploitation. :-)
This is one of those things that I just can’t wait to try. Amazon’s doing some amazing stuff with their web services (the other two being S3 and EC2).
I was late when Amazon came and demoed their three web services, missed S3, caught the end of EC2, but did get to see the whole presentation on Mechanical Turk. This is the kind of stuff you’d expect to see coming from Google or Microsoft.
This is one more sign that the service-market is coming. It will become easier for individuals to offer their services to an ever-growing market. Imagine a borderless world where domain experts can dynamically price their service in real-time based on supply and demand. It is like the stock market for services. The question is now who will be the NASDAQ or NYSE of services in tomorrow’s world?
Google had a service similar to this called Google Answers. The answers are still on Google, but the service has been discontinued. I always thought Google Answers was valuable, I see now that Mechanical Turk will take that to the next level. It sort of creates an industry around Web 2.0 services. I don’t think it is exploitation, I think it could be a good opportunity for people who prefer working from home. Please let us know how you make out with your trial.
Last month I had lunch with Jeff Barr, an Amazon Evangelist who blogs at http://aws.typepad.com. Jeff didn’t talk about selling books – he talked about the services that Bill Erickson mentions (S3, EC2, and more), and Alexa.com (owned by Amazon).
I had a ton of respect for Amazon already as I read case studies in school as they were a growing business (I remember the day they announced they were profitable, and the cool commercials about renting stadiums to store all their books, etc.). But when I met with Jeff, man, I was blown away by the direction the company is going. It’s very progressive, and super-high-tech.
No disclaimer needed – I don’t work there and I don’t use their services (yet). But I have bought books from Amazon.com :p
Jason Alba
CEO – JibberJobber.com
The Problem with Mechanical Turk
Guy Kawasaki, who is a blogger/author that every startup CEO needs to read, seems to have fallen in love with The Turk. Maybe one of the companies he backs will actually find a good use for it.
This article argues that Mechanical Turk is a failure because by offering monetary rewards for services offered, Amazon is taking away the intrinsic motivation, which was the main reason for the success of Amazon reviews.
This thing has been around since early November 2005. Where have you guys been?
Doh. For some reason my trackback didn’t work. On my blog I suggest that given how long it’s been out there, mturk has failed, and that Amazon probably won’t bother trying to make it succeed, because they’re too busy with all the other great things they do. A great idea, yes, but it just doesn’t seem to have any traction. Perhaps once there are 10 million $100 laptops out the it’ll be in a better position to succeed.
thanks for informations..
very nice…
Dave Sneyders: Yes, I can’t wait for that and would like to help this happen. With physical goods the balance of global supply and demand can be close to perfect (says e.g. Friedman in his book The World is Flat), services are coming.
Google gets all the press and buzz, but there is some amazing stuff going on Amazon.com, too!
Sorry, folks, this system is not “curve-jumping, paradigm-shifting, and revolutionary.” This system is not a “sign” of the influence of Web 2.0. Virtual worlds, multi-user dungeons, and other multiplayer game spaces have been enabling users to complete “quests” and generate their own content in exchange for real and play money for decades.
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Please show me where else I can engage people to do things like I described in the blog–ie, grading, searching, labeling, and transcribing. I’m not looking for multi-user dungeons. I’m looking for people that I can farm out tasks to.
Guy
The most high profile use of the MTurk yet:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/03/help-find-jim-gray-with-web-20/
Didn’t work, but it was cool to see such a good use of the product.
In a massively multiplayer online game, such as EverQuest II, players can engage other players to collaborate on a quest that requires the completion of a set of tasks that yield a particular reward. This collaboration is often free, but players can set terms (e.g., first dibs on a Legendary item.) Guilds often recruit members with incentives, and require members to earn Status Points for the guild by completing quests, or sets of tasks.
Similarly, Amazon.com is a virtual world in which consumers can engage other consumers via Mechanical Turk to collaborate on a goal that requires the completion of a set of tasks that yield a particular reward. This collaboration can free outside the rules and processes of Mechanical Turk, or consumers can set terms and offer incentives.
The emergent, external influence on user-to-user collaboration in interactive entertainment is called real-money trading, or RMT. In a massively multiplayer online game, consumers often “farm out tasks to” other consumers to, for example, acquire vast amounts of play money to sell for real money via services such as IGE. Consumers also spend real money for other consumers to advance their characters, and such advancement requires the completion of a lot more tasks than just “grading, searching, labeling, and transcribing.”
Sony Online Entertainment embraced real-money trading with the launch of Station Exchange, which authorizes and facilitates RMT. Sony Online earns direct revenue from RMT while earning revenue from subscribed consumers who are allowed to earn as well. This isn’t unique to Sony Online though. Entropia is yet another example.
So? Amazon.com, as a virtual world, is simply offering via Mechanical Turk the same aforementioned rules and processes in a different context for a different audience. Just as some people prefer World of Warcraft over EverQuest II, some people will prefer Amazon.com over Star Wars Galaxies. The value of Mechanical Turk isn’t lessened by not being “curve-jumping, paradigm-shifting, and revolutionary.” If anything, looking at Amazon.com as a virtual world puts the online storefront in a more interesting perspective.
The theme is right the method did not work though. Human intelligence layer is certainly needed but the model needs a little modification.
Guy – Thanks for the reminder on Amazon.com Mechanical Turk.
I started using to help test our text message internet search service 180srch.com
I actually have done work on mturk. When I can’t sleep, I’ll often look for an interesting audio snippet to transcribe. And while it is not exploitation, it does pay much less than minimum wage. I type around 80 wpm, and end up taking an hour or so to transcribe and proof a $3.00 job. That’s including the bonuses for good work.
I’m doing it for the amusement value, not the cash. I’d hate to have to try to make a living doing it tho.
Like many of you have pointed out, there is a very good reason why this hasn’t been very successful.
Well the idea of using people to do thing computers can`t isn`t new at all. As mentioned in the comments above – there are already some games on this. Check out this video – it is the original idea from Luis von Ahn:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143&q=human+programming
Check my post on the White Henley Class
http://blog.amusecorp.com/index.html?cq=1&p=88
I was impressed with how the MT was used in the search for Jim Gray – I think their could be tons of altruistic uses for a system like the MT. Projects along the lines of folding@home and SETI.
Amazon has duped us all, getting us to beta test Mechanical Turk by writing trivia questions and blog posts for pennies. Mechanical Turk was really meant for Powercast, the seach engine that’s supposed to blow Google off its power base.