Mechanical Turk

The term “Mechanical Turk” comes from a 18th century chess board that appeared to be controlled by a mechanical device that looked like a Turk. In reality it was controlled by a very small and uncomfortable German.

Why is this important to Internet Marketing?  Because the term “Mechanical Turk” now means any online service that  is controlled by humans rather than servers.  The most interesting example of this is Amazon Mobile.  This new service from Amazon allows users to take a picture of any object and within a couple minutes the user will be able to buy the object directly from Amazon.

Amazon Mobile

I’ve tried this and it is amazing — we took pictures of a stapler, a Frisbee, a pen, and a bunch of other things and the only thing it did not specifically recognize was a Transformer figure from the 80s.

If you have an idea that needs humans over server power check out Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service — Amazon’s service takes care of all the details to get your mechanical turk up and running.

I just realized this sounded like an ad — it’s not. I’m just a big fan and think there are a bunch of business opportunities here.