TxtEagle Raises $8.5 Million To Give 2.1 Billion a Voice - 7 views

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  #1 Jarrad Long on 24 Mar 12

   

  http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/txteagle-raises-8-5-million/
  
  (I'm doing mobile phone crowd-sourcing)
  
  While most people would associate mobile crowd-sourcing with the developed world (after all, participants need to afford a mobile and the costs that go with it), in this article TechCrunch author Jon Evans highlights the work of Boston-based TxtEagle - a company that crowd-sources data from thousands of participants in developing countries.
  
  TxtEagle is founded on the idea that while developing countries don't yet have a high penetration of smartphones, they do have more than 2 billion people who still use "the plain old GSM phone". Of course, these phones don't have capacity for the more advanced types of mobile crowd-sourcing like the Twitter-based examples in my chosen article, but they do allow participants to complete surveys via a protocol called USSD, which is similar to SMS, but free.
  
  As Evans explains, the business model is simple: advertisers and government researchers hire TxtEagle to survey masses of people; TxtEagle then forwards the survey to their participants' GSM phones, and pays them upon completion. But instead of paying cash, TxtEagle pays them in phone credit, which is bought from the service providers in bulk. As Evans explains, "in the prepaid world, i.e. most of the planet, mobile airtime is becoming a currency as desirable as, and nearly as convertible as, old-fashioned cash".
  
  This is an incentive model that contrasts with the reverse auction model proposed by Lee and Hoh (Lee and Hoh 2009) and one that could be seen as a better fit for mobile crowd-sourcing in developing nations. With the participants in this example earning so little, having to outbid one another as per the reverse auction model would likely lead to rather demeaning scenes by western standards, where the minimum bids would have to be incredibly low in order to be competitive. It is evidence that when we take crowd-sourcing beyond the western world, different incentive models are probably needed.
  
  Evans, J. (2011) TxtEagle Raises $8.5 Million To Give 2.1 Billion a Voice Retrieved 20 March 2012 TechCrunch: USA

   

  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner"><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/txteagle-raises-8-5-million/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/txteagle-raises-8-5-million/</a> <br /> <br /> (I'm doing mobile phone crowd-sourcing) <br /> <br /> While most people would associate mobile crowd-sourcing with the developed world (after all, participants need to afford a mobile and the costs that go with it), in this article TechCrunch author Jon Evans highlights the work of Boston-based TxtEagle - a company that crowd-sources data from thousands of participants in developing countries. <br /> <br /> TxtEagle is founded on the idea that while developing countries don't yet have a high penetration of smartphones, they do have more than 2 billion people who still use "the plain old GSM phone". Of course, these phones don't have capacity for the more advanced types of mobile crowd-sourcing like the Twitter-based examples in my chosen article, but they do allow participants to complete surveys via a protocol called USSD, which is similar to SMS, but free. <br /> <br /> As Evans explains, the business model is simple: advertisers and government researchers hire TxtEagle to survey masses of people; TxtEagle then forwards the survey to their participants' GSM phones, and pays them upon completion. But instead of paying cash, TxtEagle pays them in phone credit, which is bought from the service providers in bulk. As Evans explains, "in the prepaid world, i.e. most of the planet, mobile airtime is becoming a currency as desirable as, and nearly as convertible as, old-fashioned cash". <br /> <br /> This is an incentive model that contrasts with the reverse auction model proposed by Lee and Hoh (Lee and Hoh 2009) and one that could be seen as a better fit for mobile crowd-sourcing in developing nations. With the participants in this example earning so little, having to outbid one another as per the reverse auction model would likely lead to rather demeaning scenes by western standards, where the minimum bids would have to be incredibly low in order to be competitive. It is evidence that when we take crowd-sourcing beyond the western world, different incentive models are probably needed. <br /> <br /> Evans, J. (2011) TxtEagle Raises $8.5 Million To Give 2.1 Billion a Voice Retrieved 20 March 2012 TechCrunch: USA</div>

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