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April 2, 2008

Need A Job? Make $1.20/hour Tagging Photos

Michael Arrington

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New service TagCow caused a bit of a stir over the weekend. The product seemingly solves the problem of auto-categorization and tagging of photos, something that seems to still be beyond the processing power and software skills of most startups.

Users upload photos - thousands of them if they like - and within a few minutes the photos are returned with stunningly accurate descriptive keywords that facilitate searching and browsing later on. The product worked so well, and the site had so little description of the technology behind it, that I speculated that humans were doing the work in the background.

And….I was right. A reader sent in a tip that they saw the service on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, which is a web service that gets people to do things that are fairly hard for computers to do. TagCow is actually a perfect fit for Mechanical Turk.

Users are paid 4 cents to properly tag a group of five photos. I tagged a few photos with “TechCrunch” twenty times each, collected my 4 cents, and moved on. My guess is it would take about two minutes to properly tag the five photos. That means if you work steady and without breaks, you can make $1.20/hour. More if you are speedier.

CrunchBase Information
TagCow
Information provided by CrunchBase
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 12:04 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Dennis Bjørn Petersen

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:09 am

    I’m not sure this will make me rich…I guess if you are REALLY persistent it will…in time.. ;)

    Still you have to be pretty ambitious.

    In a few hours someone will probably make a script that will do this for you.

  2. AJ Arora

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:12 am

    I think that’s actually 28 times each…gosh Mike.

  3. John

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:13 am

    Money is money! If you have some free time, why not?

  4. Michael Arrington

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:18 am

    i wonder if any of the guys in that photo read techcrunch.

  5. Rajavanya

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:19 am

    If I have free time I will think of a new project idea to take over da world !!

  6. Tim

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:19 am

    @ John: because time is more valuable than money? 1 hour is more valuable than $1.20 surely… guess there’s no minimum wage huh

  7. Lol

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:22 am

    @Michael
    I’m sure yes, some of them look nerdy.

  8. chris.pund

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:22 am

    If you have free time and want to make some extra cash, why not use a site like CashCrate and fill out surveys, the will definitely pay better than this and you can make a lot more money with it.

  9. Jerry

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:30 am

    I tried a few. I tagged all images group sex, orgy, fellatio, swingers, voyeur etc. They were some guy’s Christmas photos

  10. theoneinthephoto

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:31 am

    TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch,

  11. theoneinthephoto again

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 am

    TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch,

  12. theoneinthephoto again

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 am

    how does it feel?

  13. CouchTycoon

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 am

    well maybe they try to capture the east-european and chinese market ;)

  14. johns

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:38 am

    $1.20/hr????? Great wage in China maybe.

  15. Smicth

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:38 am

    How does this business scale? What if a bot creates 1000 free accounts and uploads 5000 photos each at a cost of $40000 to tagcow?

  16. Nick

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:43 am

    It’s kinda like Google Image Tagger, only you are getting paid. If there are people who play that just for points, why not get paid for it (even if it is just a very small amount).

  17. gregory

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:44 am

    here in india that is a fabulous wage, think i will sign up

  18. Sunil

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:56 am

    I dont want to be rich :D

  19. walter jenner

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:56 am

    globalization 2.0 - this cruel application kindly supports child labour in india. how cool is that?

  20. compsingh

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:56 am

    Michael,
    that is exactly google why used the ESP game for photo tagging. Untill 2 unrelated users input the same tag its not a tag. Otherwise spam and mislabeled data is an insurmountable fence which tagcow will never be able to scale. Even if tagcow puts an ESP game, if you offer to share the profit with your readers, you can all blurt out “techcrunch techcrunch …..” and chase this cow to the deadpool. We humans are still powerful enough to beat the algo.

  21. Michael Arrington

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 am

    well, this was obviously going to happen:

  22. Jesus H Christ

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:27 am

    who the hell is going pay to have their photos tagged?

  23. another michael

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:34 am

    Good side is there is no shortage of work if you are into mechanical turk. just create an account and upload some images. Then go back to AMT to do the hits :)

  24. Cangelor - The China Angel Investor

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:35 am

    Tagging photos could be a great use case of massive crowd sourcing which is really promising. AI (Artificial Intelligence) still has a long way to go before it can be used in massive products. In this case massive crowd sourcing is the only way to do time consuming jobs that machine can not do.

    By the way, $1.2/h may not be so attractive for some areas in China. As far as I know, the latest lowest hourly rate in Shanghai is 8 RMB which is $1.1392.

  25. Michael Arrington

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:42 am

    Cangelor - sure, but I’m betting those people in China willing to work for $1.20 per hour don’t speak good enough english to tag these photos.

  26. Bloobeard

    April 2nd, 2008 at 2:11 am

    You’d be surprised at just how many Chinese have Engish passable enough to label a teacup, a mountain, a dog or a hat. Probaby in the tens of millions. And in the Philipines, Nigeria and India where combined there are more Engish speaking people than the US, this would be a great source of income

  27. Dario Salvelli

    April 2nd, 2008 at 2:16 am

    Tag photos for money? As an old Google program.. :D

  28. wb hosting

    April 2nd, 2008 at 2:28 am

    $1.20/hour, just wondering who have time to do that?

  29. ajay

    April 2nd, 2008 at 2:40 am

    Good job
    earning more and more
    i have also tried and earn some money

  30. Mr Oz

    April 2nd, 2008 at 4:16 am

    is this a late April Fool’s joke?

  31. Eddie G

    April 2nd, 2008 at 4:49 am

    This must be a late April Fool’s joke. What relevance would the tags have? I don’t think that these people tagging would know that a picture depicts e.g. the Louvre in Paris or such. I have no interest knowing the fact that there is a pigeon taking a shit on it or something like that.

  32. DC Crowley

    April 2nd, 2008 at 5:22 am

    government benefits pay better :p

  33. Emanuil

    April 2nd, 2008 at 5:39 am

    There are many people in Eastern Europe with good enough English that would find the $1.2 / hour quite attractive.

  34. Frank Church

    April 2nd, 2008 at 6:17 am

    It is amazing how many people simply didn’t read the entire article (too eager to comment with their crappy blog), or don’t possess comprehension skills beyond the 3rd grade level (eg. like saying they will upload photos to AMT).

    There should be a merit-based comment system (non-mandatory), that gives those commenters special differentiation (similar to author comments).

  35. Roy

    April 2nd, 2008 at 6:24 am

    Meh, the Google Image Labeller is more clever. Why pay 1.20/hr when you can make it just a LITTLE competative and have people do it for free!

    Heck, I’ve “played” that game when I’m brain-fried on a Friday afternoon before… and look at the number of points the leader board rack up.

  36. hombrelobo

    April 2nd, 2008 at 7:55 am

    So it’s OK for you to spam others but not for others to spam you ?

    Good to know …..

  37. James Paden

    April 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 am

    Obviously, they probably plan to up both their price (currently free) and their pay once the model has proven itself. This is just a simple way to test the market.

    I would pay to have photos tagged. It can be very time consuming.

  38. Faramarz

    April 2nd, 2008 at 9:27 am

    At flickr you do this for free, and gladly :|

    Why don’t these guys come up with a genius method of tapping into the free labour like flickr has? 4cents is still too much to pay when it could be gotten for free!

  39. My Instant Auto Loan

    April 2nd, 2008 at 9:50 am

    Nothing wrong with that…

  40. ned

    April 2nd, 2008 at 10:15 am

    tagging took forever and was awful; person recognition didn’t work at all; and then what? you can’t edit or add your own tags; no way they’re going near my Flickr account

  41. john griffin- cutcaster

    April 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 am

    yeah it seemed pretty obvious mechanical turk was behind it. i commented that i thought that was it as well.

    at a traditional stock agency i believe they pay a keyworder around 5-8 cents per image keyworded, which is twice this place so who knows there could be a little arb oppty here. hahaha. also a good keyworder though is more than just someone babbling on and adding words off the top of their head. they have to think about a lot of things and esp what someone would type into a search query. I wrote about that.

    http://cutcaster.blogspot.com/.....rding.html

    Id say this would be a decent service for a photo licensing agency to use which was starting up.

    I’ve heard of keyworders being paid upwards of 350 bucks a day and probably more if they are really good..

  42. Steve

    April 2nd, 2008 at 10:35 am

    Hmm… TagCow’s bonus program seems good, but they are little possibilities
    to make any money out if it, you could always fake the tags to achieve more
    hits though.

    And $1.20/h, man, at 30 I can get this bike I always dreamed of for going to work… lol!

  43. Ivan

    April 2nd, 2008 at 11:08 am

    FYI subvertandprofit.com gives $2.0 for every time they require you to digg news postings.

    In case you need to sign up.
    http://subvertandprofit.com/us.....er=ixn321.

  44. StrategCore

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    Unfortunately, the only real way of tagging images or large bodies of information and data in a meaningful way with high precision is still by human intervention. Perhaps visual recognition technology will not be far away, which will automate this process, eventually pulling keywords and tags with high accuracy rates from images and videos.

  45. Harry Wang

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    The ESP/Google method is a good one but as one stated, it could be gamed too - especially if money is involved.

    Leaderboards are always a good incentive. I can see many leaderboards for such an endeavor (i.e. most pics tagged, most tags, most verified tags, most verifications, quickest tagger, most accurate tagger based on verification process, etc.).

    They could also implement a second pass (or more) double-blind tagging process to try and reduce the spam and mis-tags. This could even be done by “trusted” taggers (maybe even in-house employees). The second pass can be conducted alot more efficiently per image so theoretically they could pay a few folks in-house decent money to ensure quality tags.

    They would also probably want to flag images as “complete” or “adequate” after the second pass (or third depending on how they setup the verification scheme).

    It sounds like they are release the raw Turk results which is definately a no-no. VERY surprised they did that (if it was not by accident or a one-off situation).

    Harry “interesting tagcow, intersting ” Wang

  46. Harry Wang

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm

    Sheesh

    When I said “It sounds like they are release the raw Turk results which is definately a no-no.”

    I meant:

    It sounds like they are releasing the raw Turk results which is definately a no-no.

    Harry “you cannot understand the words coming out of my fingers” Wang

  47. D3xt3r

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    Just wait untill someone publishes a Auto-Hotkey script to auto-tag pics.

  48. Andre Vitorio

    April 2nd, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    If I wanted to get in this niche I’d make people tag pictures for free.

    The service would use a system similar to reCAPTCHA, but using pictures instead of words.

    PS: This comment will serve as evidence to sue anyone who uses that idea in the future.

  49. Andy Wong

    April 2nd, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    As many pointed out, $1.2/hr is well enough for many in developing countries for a day living. Globalization 2.0 is a good term to describe. You can easily have a very high moral stance by blaming such activities encourage child labor, however, before there are efficient mechanisms to feed these poor children, such moral stance won’t save these children.

    Another subject.

    Current business model of tagcow is obviously not viable, however, sooner or later tagcow will charge the customers after current marketing promotion and before the VC money burn out. I think people in western countries won’t mind paying a few dollars to get someone in the world to do the dirty work. Rich people may improve family life, and poor people in other parts of the world get food in the stomach.

  50. chris (trade2save.com)

    April 2nd, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    If a known card counter walks into a casino from Vegas to Monaco an alarm goes off in security in seconds. Surely this decade old technology could be used to recognize a mountain or a dog for tagging?

  51. Harry Wang

    April 2nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    @50: There was a write-up (here? digg? elsewhere?) about technology to do that but it wasn’t totally accurate…therein lies the rub.

    Harry “usually likes the rub” Wang

  52. Me

    April 2nd, 2008 at 8:08 pm

    This service makes sense… in the right market. Being a photographer trying to make a living from stock agencies is not that funny when you have to spend hours tagging photos. And it is not just as simple as tagging a photo as mountain or dog: you need to describe the colours, the shapes, the moods… Anything! Because when clients go to a stock site looking for a photo for their next project (a book, article, ad…) you want your photos and not your competitor’s photos ‘to find’ those clients first.

    There are a few tagging services for photographers… and they are pricey and ‘too web 1.0′. If tagcow can do it for less and can offer some confidence (using that matching tag thing), then I know of a lot of clients for them.

  53. China Chair

    April 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm

    http://www.china-kitchen-cabinets.com
    As many pointed out, $1.2/hr is well enough for many in developing countries for a day living. Globalization 2.0 is a good term to describe.

  54. privacy is dead

    April 2nd, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    LONG LIVE WEB 2.0
    Maybe OK for prof togs but intelligent tagging required. use 5 dime hoes to get pics tagged “5 dime hoe”

  55. Michael

    April 3rd, 2008 at 12:17 am

    $1.20 per hour isn’t so bad, especially since I love photos and really love tagging, if you enjoy the work that you do, it is never work.

  56. Mr Oz

    April 3rd, 2008 at 1:31 am

    My pictures ar “tagging in process” since yesterday.
    I wrote them, their answer: “:) No joke. We are backed up due to overwhelming response. We are working hard to get caught up. Thanks for your patience”

    I wonder how thy’ll tag this picture I uploaded:
    http://www.oz-design.it/blog/i.....p_9197.jpg

  57. Mark

    April 3rd, 2008 at 6:14 am

    For every seemingly mundane exercise, there is usually some worthwhile applicability.

    I would like to thank the writer for bringing this opportunity to light. I have set up computer laboratories, some in schools, in third world countries and this would be a good opportunity for students to practice their English vocabulary by tagging pictures, learn computer skills and earn money which could be invested back into the school. Unfortunately very few have Internet access. However, for those that do, I believe I will pursue the possibilities.

  58. Disabled person

    April 3rd, 2008 at 11:47 am

    Michael I am disabled and amazon mechanical turk is the only thing I can do for a living. Please apologize.

  59. Disabled person

    April 3rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm

    I mean, Mr. Oz not Michael.

  60. Bonycells

    April 4th, 2008 at 12:30 am

    I’m disabled and make 2.2437 cents an hour every hour and every day, so this could definitely supplement my income if I worked at it round-the-clock. I’d make another $864 a month if I could somehow program it to work for just one website 24 hours a day and 30 days a month, lol. I wonder if I still have some programming skills that I can remember since the accident? How often do you get a check?
    Bonycells

  61. Mr Oz

    April 4th, 2008 at 1:55 am

    Apologize for what? People are not payed depending their physical or mental problems. Plus, I don’t argue about Amazon Mechanical Turk, the problem here is TagCow which pays nothing.

  62. Tim

    April 4th, 2008 at 6:44 am

    So Mike delibarately vandalized the process at which a startup company does its business while suggesting Chinese people dont have the capacity to tag the photos that it provides.

    Hats of to you mike. Keep up the great work ;)

  63. Tom

    April 4th, 2008 at 7:59 am

    This article is irresponsible and Mr. Arrington should be ashamed of himself.

  64. Tam

    April 4th, 2008 at 10:25 am

    Tim&Tom, please…

  65. Craig

    April 5th, 2008 at 1:08 am

    Hey look, I got to see some girl in her bra!

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/imagetaggingprod/685/274606_med.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0AEM7638C2FTJQPR68R2&Expires=1208850275&Signature=kVnaLf6UroVvckVpbF2EiqE9K4Q%3D

  66. Craig

    April 5th, 2008 at 1:11 am

    Holy crap, even better! This is the best $1.20/hour job I’ve ever had:

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/imagetaggingprod/685/275453_med.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0AEM7638C2FTJQPR68R2&Expires=1208850430&Signature=sLo2M3OYNyzW3JHtIufXK5HeRAs%3D

  67. Craig

    April 5th, 2008 at 1:14 am

    I could do this all day:

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/imagetaggingprod/446/277530_med.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0AEM7638C2FTJQPR68R2&Expires=1208850740&Signature=wHAsB9gWe6Vth9QO8wr56iFkKTg%3D

    OK, I’ll leave you all alone and go to bed now!

  68. Mr Oz

    April 5th, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    4 days since upload and my pics are still in process…
    BTW, ‘m happy that this “service” doesn’t work.

  69. josh

    April 6th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    $1.20 /hr ? I tried this out and manged to make $15 in a hour. It really doesn’t take 2 min to tag 5 photos more like 20-30 sec. I don’t really see this as a good source of income for US people, but 3rd world countries might find it well paying.

  70. Mr Oz

    April 7th, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Yeah josh, try to tag in 30 sec 5 images like this:

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/imagetaggingprod/1076/4193540_med.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0AEM7638C2FTJQPR68R2&Expires=1208918365&Signature=EUjkNQERVN37sBbCgPrV6c5B2Ms%3D

    and don’t forget to type all text shown.

  71. naman

    April 18th, 2008 at 10:15 am

    AMAZON MTURK IS DOWN FOR THE PAST 2 HOURS. ALTHOUGH YOU CAN DO HITS BUT THE STATS WOULDN’T UPDATE… THE NUMBER OF HITS ARE CONSTANT FOR THE PAST 2 HOURS ..

  72. Anrei

    April 20th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

    http://www.readwriteweb.com/ar.....aphics.php

  73. issah sumaila

    April 28th, 2008 at 8:37 am

    i need it badly

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