Mechanical Turk was launched in 2005, with the purpose of completing Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) for Amazon's internal business processes. Over time, the marketplace for this kind of task completion grew and external companies were allowed to post projects, too. But other than the obscure needs of a handful of businesses, what other uses does Mechanical Turk have? I wondered this when I returned to the site recently to play with the application. I already knew the app could be used for less than great purposes such as spamming and social bookmarking, but I discovered that Mechanical Turk could also be useful for image tagging and transcription, like those from Casting Words.
Two weeks ago I read a post on ReadWriteWeb about a company named SmartSheet and their new Smartsourcing tool. While I have used Google docs and a few other online document sharing services, I had never heard of SmartSheet. Even after using the application I still don't care about the online document management as much as the simplification, automation and ultimately, streamlined process for submitting and gather results of HITs. After reading that post and returning to MT, I had an epiphany: I could use SmartSheet with Mechanical Turk for real tasks.
So, how does it work? Recently, we had a list of names that we wanted to compile email and postal addresses for some outreach. While we could have spent the time to research each name and find the data ourselves, we tested the project out with Mechanical Turk. After the very easy data submission process, the results were fast and pretty cool: data started flowing back into the spreadsheet and one by one, our spreadsheet was filled with the email and mailing addresses we needed. There's no need to get the data from Amazon and manually enter it back in, and there's is even a nice little utility to reject what MT finds in case it doesn't meet your requirements, and it sends it back out for work.
While I'm sure SmartSheet is doing lots of cool stuff, and in some cases even better than stuff than Google, I don't care about that. Why? Because the draw of the application and their best source of revenue will come from the integration with Mechanical Turk.
Bottom line? SmartSheet better start promoting this and getting people hooked before someone comes along with a nice little tool that does the same and uses Google or another online document system as the backend.
Thanks for the comments David. Validation such as your post helps spread the word about Smartsheet and informs people of what's possible. Looking forward to next month when we start sharing early success stories broadly.
Interested in participating? Give us a shout.
Keep us in mind, we have had success so far.
David, you're spot about our advantage. We are very aware of the current and future potential of these outsourcing capabilities within work management tools like Smartsheet. As with all software development, there's a significant part of the design that comes with building toward a long term vision. The MTurk integration is no opportunistic event, it's been part of the plan for some time. Chapter 10 in our book on productivity, and my recent post on WorkExchanges are small samples of our thought process.
http://www.smartsheet.com/productivity/chapter10
http://www.smartsheet.com/blog/brent-frei/work-exchanges-when-people-replace-machines
All this is to say, "you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg with our Smartsourcing feature". We've got a healthy respect for the folks at Google, and are more than paranoid about squandering a great opportunity with poor marketing. Doing our best.
Brent, really glad to hear this is part of the plan. It has gotten our attention and makes MTurk more usable for many.
David... you should care about the other cool stuff Smartsheet is doing because it completely blows Google Spreadsheets out of the water. I'm a newer user and a rabid fan. In my opinion there isn't much to compare between Google and Smartsheet, other than the 'sheet' format.
MTurk is really only a small portion of what makes this such a productive tool. Many folks needing HIT work done also need collaboration and Smartsheet is THE answer for that. Its completely changing the way we work and I love it.
Forget about MTurk for a minute and look at the rest of the app. Its very impressive, especially things like update requests and workspaces.
Tom, thanks for the comment and bringing my attention to some of the other features. I am not a big user of Google docs, have maybe 4 things in there for some quick collaboration. I am going to spend some time learning more about SmartSheet and understand how I can use it.
The MTurk stuff is powerful and got me to a paying user, so that is a good start for them.
I am just learning about this stuff and very excited to get proficient as I am a one man business for now that spends many nights and long hours trying to find ways to compete with more financially adept competition but lack not knowledge just manpower to carry out my work,
Thanks for writing about this happy Holidays