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So, if I understand this is essentially reselling Mechanical Turk services with a little work in hiding the details from the customer? I'm not quite sure if thi

by jheriko 15y ago

So, if I understand this is essentially reselling Mechanical Turk services with a little work in hiding the details from the customer? I'm not quite sure if this is a scam or not... ...but I can think of plenty of cases where people sell "expertise" which boils down to the same thing... normally its a bit more complicated than this though. I wonder if the customers would pay if they knew of Amazon's service? My guess is they just don't know about it, or at least didn't think it would be any good for them...

dshipper 15y ago
Hey jheriko thanks for the comment! Yes what I'm doing is essentially taking the MTurk service which is for doing a very wide range of tasks, and is also somewhat time consuming to set up, and reselling it as a targeted service for people who want to get their websites reviewed. It's definitely not a scam, just me building a service I thought people might find useful and charging for it. Feel free to email me at dan@danshipper.com, I would love to talk to you more about your thoughts on this.
bemmu 15y ago
Nothing wrong with reselling stuff. Also, Mechanical Turk is not available in all countries.
- nedwin 15y ago
  "reselling stuff" aka commerce. definitely nothing wrong with it.
deleted 15y ago
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acangiano 15y ago
It's service to non-US based users.
dget 15y ago
Figuring out how to use mTurk, figuring out how to ask questions to get useful results, and tabulating/summarizing answers are all things that the person who is asking for the tests probably has more important things to do, particularly the first two. It's a fair amount of work.
pbreit 15y ago
I don't get this attitude. All of business is using raw materials to create something that people are willing to pay for. Using Mechanical Turk is not always a pleasant experience. There is quite a bit of nuance on how to price things, how to qualify submissions and submitters, etc (not that a service will get all this correct right out of the gate). And don't forget, we're talking about a rather modest $10-40.
patio11 15y ago
You're wrapping Turk in a human. That provides value. + Have you ever dealt with Turkers? I did for a client once. Here's the task, simplified: "I give you job title, you give me degree title. For example, if I say 'elementary school teacher' you say she has a Bachelors degree in Education and so your answer is Education." Input (to turker): Car technician Output (from turker): BACHELORS DEGREE IN CAR TECHNICIAN I rejected that: sorry, I will not pay you two cents for that work. The Turker got into a running email argument with me: "WHY U NO PAY?" "Because the answer is in all capital letters, does not follow formatting instructions, and is wrong." "U NO SAY WRITE SMALL LETTERS!!" Regardless, though: reselling labor is not skeezy. +: You might think Amazon Turk pays for human intelligence. No, it pays for human intelligence that finds it economically viable to work on Amazon Turk. Y U NO GET DIFRENCE.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
rodh257 15y ago
Many of Amazons services are meant to be resold in such a way. Heroku, Dropbox, AppHarbor etc. They all provide varying levels of extra value. Making it easier to access these services is extra value.

by jheriko 15y ago

dshipper 15y ago

Hey jheriko thanks for the comment! Yes what I'm doing is essentially taking the MTurk service which is for doing a very wide range of tasks, and is also somewhat time consuming to set up, and reselling it as a targeted service for people who want to get their websites reviewed. It's definitely not a scam, just me building a service I thought people might find useful and charging for it. Feel free to email me at dan@danshipper.com, I would love to talk to you more about your thoughts on this.

bemmu 15y ago

Nothing wrong with reselling stuff. Also, Mechanical Turk is not available in all countries.

nedwin 15y ago
"reselling stuff" aka commerce. definitely nothing wrong with it.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

acangiano 15y ago

It's service to non-US based users.

dget 15y ago

Figuring out how to use mTurk, figuring out how to ask questions to get useful results, and tabulating/summarizing answers are all things that the person who is asking for the tests probably has more important things to do, particularly the first two. It's a fair amount of work.

pbreit 15y ago

I don't get this attitude. All of business is using raw materials to create something that people are willing to pay for. Using Mechanical Turk is not always a pleasant experience. There is quite a bit of nuance on how to price things, how to qualify submissions and submitters, etc (not that a service will get all this correct right out of the gate). And don't forget, we're talking about a rather modest $10-40.

patio11 15y ago

You're wrapping Turk in a human. That provides value. + Have you ever dealt with Turkers? I did for a client once. Here's the task, simplified: "I give you job title, you give me degree title. For example, if I say 'elementary school teacher' you say she has a Bachelors degree in Education and so your answer is Education." Input (to turker): Car technician Output (from turker): BACHELORS DEGREE IN CAR TECHNICIAN I rejected that: sorry, I will not pay you two cents for that work. The Turker got into a running email argument with me: "WHY U NO PAY?" "Because the answer is in all capital letters, does not follow formatting instructions, and is wrong." "U NO SAY WRITE SMALL LETTERS!!" Regardless, though: reselling labor is not skeezy. +: You might think Amazon Turk pays for human intelligence. No, it pays for human intelligence that finds it economically viable to work on Amazon Turk. Y U NO GET DIFRENCE.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

rodh257 15y ago

Many of Amazons services are meant to be resold in such a way. Heroku, Dropbox, AppHarbor etc. They all provide varying levels of extra value. Making it easier to access these services is extra value.