Valley of the Turks
So I wanted to share some data that I've been collecting talking to various folks participating on Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
When I tell people about Mechanical Turk, most look at the service with serious disbelief that a place, an environment like Turk could ever exist. Why do they do the tasks on there? Are they all from India? No one in their right mind would be on here and doing these various tasks. Yet, turks live on participating on the site every day doing bit tasks for all kinds of requestors.
In one of my studies I decided to ask the turks flat out, why do you do what you do? Keep in mind this is a small sample set of 20 people.
It's Vegas Baby.
One of the most common "freakouts" from normal people I talk to is - Why the hell would anyone do a 3 cent task or HIT(human initiated task)?
Turks are motivated by fun and fast cash. Think about it. Turk represents a pot of gold online. The real task isn't doing the tasks per say, its finding easy tasks with decent payouts. Turkers pride themselves on finding fast good deals for their time. They also don't typically just go to Turk to do real work, many are multitasking doing other work, watching TV, or are simply bored and looking for something else to do. A few are even confused why they are still there doing tasks for 3 cents when they know its a raw deal. Its almost like a Vegas addiction thing- sure I lose but I also have the potential to make big.
What about rewards?
Its also important that not all tasks are 3 cents on Turk. It tends to get that rep, but there are plenty of $1-$7 tasks on turk along the allure of rewards and bonuses from various requestors.
Participation in rewards on turk is kinda murky. For those that know about them, and activily seek them out they seem to be a decent deal, to many however they're kinda extra grey material. Basically the vibe is, sure nice, but don't count on it. Rewards are usually given to turks based on how fast they complete a HIT or if they give great info. In my studies I gave nice rewards to those turks that really worked hard to articulate how mechanical turk worked and or how they really felt. As a researcher, or anyone really, you can see BS or not pretty easily these days. Clearly turks aren't too hopeful for rewards though, they seem to occur infrequently for them.
What a waste of time!
Another popular misconnection people outside of turk seem to apply on turk is that turks blow hundreds of hours on the service, reinforcing the idea that turk is a massive waste of time and money.
Most turks are seeking out fast one hit wonder like tasks, which is why they typically fall prey to the 3 cent HITs. When they do choose to do a task that will take 30 minutes to an hour, they expect to be paid alot more, still far below most peoples standards. But again, remember most turks don't come to turk for work. Its extra fun, multitask activity etc.
Friends and Family
Turks we're a bit split down the middle on whether or not they shared their turk interest with family and friends. Some shared their success cash making adventures with family and in turn created more turks in the system while a few we're down right cautious to insure that they didn't creat more competition for themselves.
Got to get paid!
I wondered what was the most a turk ever got paid on a HIT, so I asked them.
Turks who cashed in on $5 to $25 hits typically we're writing reviews for websites, books or rewriting marketing & PR content, a few even did web site redesign bits. The average win however is more like a buck or two.
Influence...
So what influences a turk to do what they do?
Easy fast cash, can't beat that, that's pretty clear and obvious, however there are other influences as well. Several turks like the idea of repeat tasks. They did it before, it took X time with Y reward, let's do it again. Expectations are set nice and clear, the road to warm successful feelings is there. A few turks actively seek out requestors who post fun, rewarding, cash worthy tasks. These turks talk about having a kind of relationship with that requestor, they know not only what to expect from that requestor, but look forward to working with them, to do the task, to help achieve a goal for them. Lastly turks like to do tasks that match their skill set. So they'll do long, possibly involved tasks if those tasks match what they like to do already, might as well get paid.
Been turkin for long?
Most turks I talked to have either just recently started out using Mechanical Turk or have been part of the system for over a year. What really surprised me was the number of folks who just recently got started using turk, again it made me think of the pot of gold online they could potentially be seeing. We're also coming off the wake of oil spikes where consumers were looking around anyone to help scrape up a few bucks to pay for expensive gas.
The news media both online and offline did a pretty good job alerting folks to turk, because it popped up often in my response data to question How did you find out about Mechanical Turk? Nearly half of them heard about turk via the news online or offline, all related to story pieces about how to make an extra buck at home. Other turks found the service searching for it and other like services such as- surveys for cash, work at home etc.
Ever thought of playing for the other team?
Another question I had for turks was whether or not any of them tried out being a requestor asking for work to do be done versus just being the worker. A few have considered putting tasks in themselves but generally, no, most of them were workers.
The quest continues.
There's more data here but you get the idea, turks are real humans folks. Previous people have done more demographic studies, and I'll you this bit, 80% of these people are from the states. For me, the studies continue, I find Mechnical Turk a facsinating ecosystem to observe, participate in and study upon. I use them constantly at work engaging turks to help me in sometimes odd and unique ways, always in the hopes to pull up yet another few data points for a project. Its still hard to hang your hat on their data output, but you'd be surprised at just how normal these folks are, and that is my core point here. This isn't a system of freaks, if you look at it that way, you might as well direct that lens of clarity upon yourself as well, or anyone who spends any time online.
For me the quest continues, I'll keep you posted!
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