Microworking: Labor on-demand through Crowdsourcing

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Microworking: Labor on-demand through Crowdsourcing By thequill

Man at work Crowdsourcing: Where will it end? In developed economies, outsourcing has become somewhat of a reviled word among workers. Many people see jobs leaving their country and heading to the less-developed countries where labor is available for a fraction of the price. This is the price we pay for the modern technology that makes all this possible. However, the large-scale establishment of production and support facilities on foreign soil is not where it ends. The concept of crowdsourcing has now appeared, where work is broken up into discrete tasks and assigned to workers based around the world. The Rise of Crowdsourcing In 2005, Amazon launched their Mechanical Turk service, partly to outsource some of their own internal tasks that required an element of human intelligence.

These tasks are termed Human Intelligence Tasks (or HITs for short) and are typically small discrete tasks that are relatively easy for a human to perform but almost impossible for a computer to accurately complete. In return for completing each task, the human worker is given a cash reward that typically ranges from a single cent to a few dollars, depending on the time and skill involved. The person who provided the work (known as the requester) can choose to accept the work and pay the worker, or he can reject it--if he feels it is not up to standard--and refuse payment. This has obvious appeal to businesses that deal in tasks appropriate for crowdsourcing but are used to more traditional (and expensive) methods of employment. Now there is no need to take on permanent employees; instead they can turn to a massive pool of labor that is available on demand, paying just enough to get their required tasks completed. Exploitation? We should ask ourselves what this is going to mean for workers in general? If we look at the HITs typically available on Mechanical Turk, the rewards given for the time involved would give a dismal income if performed full time. It would certainly be considerably lower than typical minimum-wage levels in most developed countries. The rewards may be attractive to those in developing countries, as long as they have affordable access to the Internet. Strangely though, the user base seems to be largely rooted in the United States. It's possible that people do this for such low rewards as they regard it as a form of recreation or a way to make a little extra in what would otherwise be idle moments. Alternatively, it might be a supplemental income for those that do not have the option of traditional employment, such as stay-at-home moms or the severely disabled. The Next Generation While Mechanical Turk was the first example of this kind of large-scale automated outsourcing, Amazon seems uninterested in developing the concept further. Other companies have instead taken up the torch and moved the concept to the next level. The main focus of the new startups is to improve on the project management side and provide a much more complete service. Some of these new startups, such as CrowdFlower, choose to layer their services on top of Amazon's already established Mechanical Turk platform. CrowdFlower is keen to emphasize the positive aspects that crowdsourcing can bring to the less well off. For example, they have paired with Samasource, an organization that provides computer-based

work to those in Africa, in order to allow the residents of a Kenyan refugee camp to work on their projects. Workers take shifts on equipment provided by Samasource, and their earnings are then spent on improving the quality of life within the camp. While layering services on top of Mechanical Turk reduces up-front infrastructure costs, others are taking their own approach. ClowdCroud operates its own platform as a Facebook application. While the company has had to invest additional time and resources to develop its own platform for crowdsourcing, this gives some very substantial benefits. Firstly, it has enabled them to implement their own credibility system that assesses workers based on past work. Having this enables the company to control which workers have access to certain tasks. For example, a worker with a high credibility may be allowed to review the work completed by lower rated workers. This system also allows more complex tasks to be performed. Credential tests are implemented that allow workers to qualify for specialized work requiring more skill. Currently it offers services and work, such as English editing, language translation, copy writing, and other work that may be specific to particular projects. CloudCrowd pays its workers for approved work at the end of every business day through PayPal at no cost to the worker; this is probably one of the most workerfriendly payment systems you will find on the Internet. Another notable crowdsourcing company is ClickWorker, which is based in Europe and, like CloudCrowd, operates its own platform. ClickWorker tends to focus on more complex tasks such as article writing and translation, and it has an extensive system of base and project assessments (some of which are automated) that qualify workers for various tasks. The Future It remains to be seen how far the crowdsourcing market will extend; it could be taken to areas not yet explored, such as software engineering. For example, software design techniques already exist to break software up into manageable pieces and test the results; all that is required is a programmer to create the code in between. A step in this direction has already been taken by uTest, which crowdsources the testing of software and web applications.

Summary In developed economies, outsourcing has become somewhat of a reviled word among workers. Many people see jobs leaving their country and heading to the less-developed countries where labor is available for a fraction of the price. This is the price we pay for the modern technology that makes all this possible. However, the large-scale establishment of production and support facilities on foreign soil is not where it ends. The concept of crowdsourcing has now appeared, where work is broken up into discrete tasks and assigned to workers based around the world.

Description It remains to be seen how far the crowdsourcing market will extend; it could be taken to areas not yet explored, such as software engineering. For example, software design techniques already exist to break software up into manageable pieces and test the results; all that is required is a programmer to create the code in between. A step in this direction has already been taken by uTest, which crowdsources the testing of software and web applications.

Tags: ClickWorker, clickworking, CloudCrowd, Crowdsourcing, earning extra money online, Mechanical Turk

Posted by Fritz Schaefer

Aug 29, 2011 01:46 pm GMT Viewed 4079 times

Author: thequill Source

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