11–20 of 28 posts
It's unbelievable that no one has swooped in to crush MTurk given how little Amazon has done to develop it since 2005(!)
At my last job I was involved in a project where we were going to use CrowdFlower, but it ended up being canceled. I was always curious about how good their results are.
Fascinating. 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.…
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.
Fascinating. 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.…
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.
It's unbelievable that no one has swooped in to crush MTurk given how little Amazon has done to develop it since 2005(!)
It's unbelievable that no one has swooped in to crush MTurk given how little Amazon has done to develop it since 2005(!)
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, b…
If the purpose is dirt-cheap labor, they should open up the door to markets where $cents matter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, b…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
At first, I thought MTurk was good for getting translation work done, and checked by others. It worked OK, but I had to be clever to avoid the cheaters who would ignore instructions not to use machine translation. After refining my tactics, talking to a lot of workers, and fending off the crooks, I got a few decent translations (for my iPhone app). Then I tried a new tactic. I hired some pros from various translation…
It seems to be a failed social experiment to me, there is definitely a negative feedback loop there. Bad HITS, low wages, withheld payments, bad workers, sweatshops. Hard to imagine it will get any better. I wonder if you reversed the process and had projects bid on workers if it could counter the race to the bottom effect. Include a system where work could be divided into common types and include worker metrics and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, b…
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.