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Like Airbnb takes advantage of a previously untapped supply of places to sleep, like Uber takes advantage of a previously untapped supply of driver's time, Mech

Like Airbnb takes advantage of a previously untapped supply of places to sleep, like Uber takes advantage of a previously untapped supply of driver's time, Mechanical Turk takes advantage of a previously untapped supply of people's minds. But is it as profitable? Why isn't there something that makes it super simple for me to take surveys on my phone while I wait somewhere? I'd rather answer some marketing questions for a quarter than play Dots as I wait to meet a friend.

ctdonath 13y ago
Looks like there's an opportunity to sell an app for this. A key for leveraging the untapped brainpower is presenting Mechanical Turk work in a way akin to many successful games: optimize the interface to a mobile device, make it "instant on" with pre-filtered options (no/minimal login & other logistics), just present the next task as something to do in a minute or so (or skip in a second). Sell that for a buck or $5, pushed as easy for a buyer to earn back fast. Crack for intellectuals?
- FLUX-YOU 13y ago
  The desktop interface ought to be optimized as well. You could even go as far as bringing together multiple sites like M-turk to keep your filtered job queue full (standardized API, anyone?) It should also be possible to write something to check a bunch of bitcoin faucet sites and present tasks as they come available (though I suspect that's less than honest work, heh). Many of those have timers, which are easy to predict, and video watching can be put in the background so you can do things in parallel.
incision 13y ago
*>"Why isn't there something that makes it super simple for me to take surveys on my phone while I wait somewhere?" Judging by the going rates on mturk, you aren't going to make a quarter for a simple survey, more like a few cents. In my experience, a task that pays $0.25 likely to take 10+ minutes and require some actual effort. Not that these are bad things necessarily. I've seen some pattern-recognition type tasks on mturk in the $0.25 range that I'd call fun. Also, in the case of actual surveys I wonder how the value of a regular survey taker's responses would change over time? Would it go up by creating an ever more specific profile of yourself or go down as the collector already has data for your demographic? Are the surveys even necessary? Could someone simply create an open market for personal data? Just put some subset of your current snapshot up for bid and collect small passive income from accesses to it cutting out the middlemen who currently collect and market this data via their "free" web services. Fascinating possibilities, imo.

ctdonath 13y ago

Looks like there's an opportunity to sell an app for this. A key for leveraging the untapped brainpower is presenting Mechanical Turk work in a way akin to many successful games: optimize the interface to a mobile device, make it "instant on" with pre-filtered options (no/minimal login & other logistics), just present the next task as something to do in a minute or so (or skip in a second). Sell that for a buck or $5, pushed as easy for a buyer to earn back fast. Crack for intellectuals?

FLUX-YOU 13y ago
The desktop interface ought to be optimized as well. You could even go as far as bringing together multiple sites like M-turk to keep your filtered job queue full (standardized API, anyone?) It should also be possible to write something to check a bunch of bitcoin faucet sites and present tasks as they come available (though I suspect that's less than honest work, heh). Many of those have timers, which are easy to predict, and video watching can be put in the background so you can do things in parallel.

incision 13y ago

*>"Why isn't there something that makes it super simple for me to take surveys on my phone while I wait somewhere?" Judging by the going rates on mturk, you aren't going to make a quarter for a simple survey, more like a few cents. In my experience, a task that pays $0.25 likely to take 10+ minutes and require some actual effort. Not that these are bad things necessarily. I've seen some pattern-recognition type tasks on mturk in the $0.25 range that I'd call fun. Also, in the case of actual surveys I wonder how the value of a regular survey taker's responses would change over time? Would it go up by creating an ever more specific profile of yourself or go down as the collector already has data for your demographic? Are the surveys even necessary? Could someone simply create an open market for personal data? Just put some subset of your current snapshot up for bid and collect small passive income from accesses to it cutting out the middlemen who currently collect and market this data via their "free" web services. Fascinating possibilities, imo.