• CloudCrowd Takes On CrowdFlower To Outsource Labor To The Cloud

    Leena Rao

    Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

    Friday, March 19th, 2010

    TechCrunch50 startup CrowdFlower has been attracting a lot of attention, even raising $5 million in funding recently. CrowdFlower is a labor as a service startup that helps businesses outsource mundane or repetitive tasks to the cloud. Now the startup has attracted a competitor, recently launched CloudCrowd, which also promises increase efficiency and lower costs to companies by breaking large projects into smaller tasks, and distributing them to its virtual workforce.

    Once a client assigns a task to CloudCrowd, the company will distribute tasks its work force of more than 100,000 workers. With each task completed, a worker earn a credibility rating that determines the types of tasks they are offered. Workers who don’t have a rating yet are assigned basic tasks until they develop a reputation. Workers are able to see how much each separate task pays, and earnings are distributed through PayPal.

    Tasks range from content moderation, internet research, audio and video transcription to data entry. Since the company’s launch a few months ago, CloudCrowd has completed over 500,000 tasks for a variety of clients, including USC and RentCycle.

    As I wrote above CloudCrowd will face competition from CrowdFlower, but it seems that the model is attracting the attention of businesses to perform mundane tasks, so there should be room fr several players in the space.

    Company: CloudCrowd
    Website: cloudcrowd.com
    Launch Date: April 30, 2009
    Funding: $5.1M

    CloudCrowd is one of the leading online workforce platforms, distributing millions of pieces of work to more than 200,000 workers. With projects ranging from high-end writing to quick-and-easy 10 second verification tasks, CloudCrowd provides the most advanced opportunity for individuals to find good work and get paid well. The workers of CloudCrowd are independent contractors who set their own schedules and choose their own tasks. CloudCrowd offers individuals new ways to make money, achieve recognition, and fit work into busy...

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