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.