Re:Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam.
by nmcfarl on Thursday December 16, 2010 @11:33PM
(#2015179)
I have to say that although it feels that way, lately they've been sort of active.
They've been using twitter since October at: http://twitter.com/amazonmturk
And they just launched launched a blog at: http://mechanicalturk.typepad.com/
Largely I attribute this to Natala Menezes, their newish Product Manager.
Nathan, thank you for the kind words -- but I really can't take any credit. Just know we are actively listening and we take all the feedback, even the controversial bits, very seriously.
The obvious question: do you have a computer program set to alert you if "natala" appears on a tech site in a mturk context, or a mechanical turk task set with a 10 cent payment to email you whenever you're mentioned?
;-) No. I found out the old fashioned way -- a friend saw the post and sent it to me. He reads YCombinator news much more frequently than me! It does help to have a unique name...
Re:Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam.
by zacharycohn on Friday December 17, 2010 @01:02PM
(#2017031)
Google Alerts.
MTurk has been in beta for a while. What's new about MTurk since last year?
Re:Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam.
by keith_rich on Friday December 17, 2010 @02:29AM
(#2015549)
But what have they done lately? Do you seriously consider opening a blog and a twitter account to be "sort of active"? The blog contains a single fluffy marketing piece.
My experience with MTurk suggests that Amazon has mostly abandoned the product. Amazon still uses it for product classification, but does not participate in the community forums (even on the official AWS MTurk developer forum). No new features have appeared in several years, and enhancement requests have fallen on deaf ears.
That said, MTurk still works. The API still does what its documentation claims. People still perform tasks. Payment still works.