Idea Day7: Personal Outsourcing?
Case A:
A college student doing his own term-paper project wants to have information about web 2.0. He/she is very good at organizing presented information, but poor at data mining. Can he/she outsource the job of searching/filtering valuable information to other students or professionals that are currently on line?
Case B:
I want to bid something on ebay, but I am too busy to track the auction. Can I hire someone who is experienced at bidding strategy on ebay?
Case C:
I am not rich, I am not a big corporation, and I don’t have huge budget. Can I still get outsourced tasks done? Since it’s at personal level, a short-term (less than few hours to complete) assistant is enough for me. Is there any freelancer interested in those low-margin works?
Maybe PDAs or other smart software can help us deal with daily trivial things efficiently as well. But it would be nice to have real-time assistance on line when irregular, informal, or short-term needs occur.
So how about an Internet service centralizes and redistributes human resource?
For instance, I am a registered user in this service, and I’m free this afternoon. I have my profession or special skills described on my profile section. I can sit at my desk surfing Internet at will, and wait someone who needs short-term help I can offer. The work may take less than 30 minutes to complete (such as I aggregate data for the student in case A.), and then I can continue to do anything I want and wait for next requests. After each work, I receive either payment from my employer or virtual rewards. (which means help for free.) Your contribution will be remembered, and who knows next time when you need someone to carry out your outsourced tasks, they might offer you a free ticket.
Besides, I can install a widget or plugin to my instant messenger or browser. Once certain kinds of on line helps/needs are available, I will be informed immediately.
Major on line job recruiters may have built this service model for some time, yet I believe communities driven relationship is a key to success in this mutual benefited outsourcing network of personal level.
Sphere It
