The
Amazon Mechanical Turk is an interesting spin on managing small projects. It allows people to enter tasks which are easily done by people and not quite worth it to automate. Small tasks like this are often difficult to get done if the infrastructure is not there. This is why sites like
Elance where created as well.
This model of business appears to have its roots in the temporary agency. Where workers signup and people with tasks post their jobs to be done.
Some call centers handle things like this as well, they have a certain amount of computer stations and the workers are all given the same training. It is up to them to choose which desk to sit at and login. Once they are logged in the computer starts feeding tasks from the queue.
With Amazons Turk system is it looks more like an api the all ready had internally and someone said, hey for a little bit of money we can make this public and it may or may not work out. As for working out it appears to only created press and blog attention, the cost to pay for this awareness is most likely more then it cost to make this system. In that sense it is a success and does not really need to go any where else.
Before thinking of making a business on the temporary agency system, make sure you have a source of people with projects of value and people who can do the tasks.
