If  “mechanical turk” has a strange connotation for you: it has a history that dates back to the year 1769. Read about it here!

So what’s the whole thing about? Mturk is supposed to solve problems for software developers that need human intelligence. The example given by Amazon is that of identifying objects in photographs – something at which even children easily outperform a computer.

Mturk is truly long tail: it aggregates micro jobs (for micro money) and puts them in front of a huge pool of people, offering solutions for the tiniest niche question at an affordable price.

Amazon offers its logistics: a huge pool of possible “requesters” and “workers”, they collect and distribute the money. And they of course collect a fee for their service, which is 10% of the fee charged, but at least 0.005 $.

One of the tasks placed on mturk involves the search for Steve Fossett: participants are asked to view satellite images for signs of his plane. Marked photographs are then further examined by experts.

The benefit of mturk is clear: it enables companies or developers to have jobs done that would otherwise be too expensive to be performed at all.