When Henry Ford introduced the assembly line to his automotive company in 1908, his perfection of mass production not only changed the car industry, but almost every other industry in existence. Now, the assembly line is coming online. Companies such as Microtask, Amazon, and CloudCrowd are revolutionizing work efficiency by applying the concept of the assembly line to online jobs.
Microtask is a company based out of Finland that created software that takes “dull, repetitive work” that is undesirable from its customers and divides it into smaller portions and distributes them to their several workforces, and also offers the option of using the customer’s staff. This service is in high demand for many small companies that cannot afford to make their employees fulfill tasks that are necessary but a waste of time for that person to complete for they interfere with the employee’s work when they could be completed by someone for a cheaper price. Mechanical Turk is a program created by Amazon.com that uses concepts similar to those of Microtask. It is an online marketplace where companies can post tasks that they need completed and people can complete these mini jobs for them and get paid by the amount of work completed, such as correcting grammar, verifying websites, etc. Although associate professor at the University of the Pacific, Miriam Cherry, claims that people using Mechanical Turk earn less than minimum wage, Kay Kinton, a spokesperson for Amazon, stated that if one works fast enough, their pay rate “can add up quickly.”
Mechanical Turkers have the option of picking which tasks they complete. This way, tasks are completed by people who understand them and therefore they can be completed quickly and effectively. Microtaskers are assigned tasks and have no choice. And although all Microtask employees are trained to be able to complete every type of job, this auto match-up does not guarantee the best possible worker for every job. However, Microtaskers are also supplied with everything they need on a single screen, which increases productivity since they waste no time gathering any additional information.
Ville Miettinen, the chief executive of Microtask, says that the goal is to have several different kinds of these mini jobs for each worker and to have them vary and switch often so that the employee does not have to endure the same tedious task for hours on end. However, this luxury is not yet available since the company is still in its beginning stages. But hopefully it will soon be incorporated into the service.
CloudCrowd is another company that helps businesses with outsourcing. The benefit of using CloudCrowd is that it splits up information so that a worker only sees bits and pieces of an assignment and never sees the full source. For example, if a business needed something translated, CloudCrowd first has a machine translate the text, then it is broken up into several small parts and sent to “garble hunters” to determine where errors are. Then, workers with experience in both languages look at these sections and correct them. After this, an editor checks the final product, but only about a page at a time. So while many companies may be skeptical about their information being exploited, CloudCrowd ensures that each worker only works on a small, randomly chosen section at a time to guarantee that the information as a whole is unattainable by any of their workers.
Although Mr. Miettinin of Microtask claims that monetary compensation for boring and “soul-draining” tasks such as these is a “20th-century concept,” the demand remains high, and is a result in the growth in technology, according to Socialtext. Crowdsourcing, the process of outsourcing tasks, is an option that can cut major costs for small businesses. These three companies are ahead of the curve and should expect major increases in traffic as the word gets spread.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/business/31digi.html?ref=business-computing
http://www.microtask.com/
https://www.socialtext.net/ism4300/index.cgi?crowdsourcing
1 comment:
Microtask and CloudCrowd probably think that they have struck oil in the cloud-computing world. However, I think the business sounds more like a 21st century telephone operator. What’s going to be next? Are accounting firms going to outsource work to children in India to do math so they don’t have to type on the calculator? Microtask has come up with a brilliant scheme, but why use humans to do the work? The company has an amazing idea, yet they are using 20th century labor. I don’t think it will be long until computers or machines will perform all tasks that don’t require a college education.
With the rate computer technology is advancing, Microtask would have been better off spending the next few years quietly finding investors and developing software that could perform these miniscule operations. Once a program was developed that could perform these actions, Microtask’s success would be inevitable. Rather than paying employees cents on the answer, only the original costs of researching and developing would be accrued. But, since the word is already out, I’ll bet Microtask becomes nonexistent within months. Companies like Oracle already have the necessary resources to develop the software that I mentioned above and will probably buy out Microtask. Overall, I think Microtask has come up with an incredible idea, however I think they aimed far too low when considering the application.
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