Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam.

Re:Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam. by aresant on Friday December 17, 2010 @12:23AM (#2015309)

I think this is one of those examples where nobody's rushing in because no matter how you slice it, the product is just not that useful.

I've used it a few times and because the eco system is truly about hiring dirt, dirt cheap labor you kind of get what you pay for.

Beyond that the revenue model sucks - the concept of running millions of micro-transactions and having a little piece of all the action is compelling, but again because the product use is so limited it's difficult to make signifigant revenue.

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Re:Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam. by iwwr on Friday December 17, 2010 @03:31AM (#2015641)

Last I checked, MTurk still accepted only US credit cards. This puts a dent in the potential size of the ecosystem.

If the purpose is dirt-cheap labor, they should open up the door to markets where $cents matter.

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Re:Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam. by thetable on Friday December 17, 2010 @05:18AM (#2015801)

I'm pretty sure I recently used a non-US credit card to pay for MTurk. They require you live in the US, but they don't seem to verify that.

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Re:Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam. by iwwr on Friday December 17, 2010 @06:16AM (#2015889)

They verify for valid zip codes and they prune false addresses from time to time. You have to lie to Amazon, or know someone in the US.

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Re:Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% Spam. by eru on Friday December 17, 2010 @06:58AM (#2015972)

You can work from everywhere. You just have to have a US credit card to pay somebody.

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