Amazon’s Mechancial Turk
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Written By Reprise Media | November 4, 2005 | Share This
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“Don’t knock it ’til you try it” is often said of things that involve serious boredom (bird-watching), gastrointestinal disgust (thousand year old eggs) or potential for bodily harm (base jumping).
Amazon is asking its users to do the same with its latest offering, Mechanical Turk, a program which offers monetary rewards in exchange for performing small tasks.
What kind of tasks? According to Amazon they’re ones that are “extraordinarily difficult for computers, but simple for humans to answer.” Examples might be determining whether there’s a certain object in a photograph or writing product descriptions.
What kind of rewards? The ones currently listed on the site range from $0.03 to $0.65 cents. There’s an API for third-party developers to create their own tasks - Amazon will get a cut of 10%.
The always-ready-to-judgey-judge-judge crowd over at Slashdot says there’s no way anyone will ever make any money off this and I have to say I’m inclined to agree.
Well, make that significant money.
And what a great deal for Amazon - it’s getting copywriting services that normally cost $50 an hour for pocket change while veering away from the bad press that comes with offshoring the work.
Oops, there I go knocking it before I try it…
Alright though, to be fair I’ll present another point of view, that of Greg Yardley who says the system is pure genius.
BTW, if you’re wondering where the phrase “mechanical turk” came from, it’s actually a really crazy story.
Topics: ECommerce |