Inside Social Games

In an interesting twist on offers – the  online advertising coupons that users can take for things like points in social game — there’s now a new way to earn. By doing virtual labor, via a partnership between payments company Gambit and “labor as a service” company CrowdFlower.

The idea is pretty straightforward. If you’re a user playing a social game, you go into whatever interface the company has set up for offers and other payments. Instead of being asked to, say, buy a Netflix subscription or a ringtone, or purchase a virtual currency directly, there will be a new part of the interface where you can take simple, online jobs. See the screenshot for the game myFarm. In it, a company needs the correct contact information for four businesses. It asks that users take 30 minutes to search the web and find the information, in exchange for points in the game.

In terms of making sure the users’ work ends up being valuable to the business, Crowdflower gives each user a reputation score. Multiple users have to ‘agree’ on the same answer for the answer to be cleared in the company’s system. People who have done well will be able to complete more and more difficult jobs. Because more difficult jobs are normally worth more to companies, users will be able to earn more points from them.

So, client companies never actually pays the user for their work, while the person gets the virtual goods they would otherwise have to earn, or pay for with actual cash. It’s a sort of win-win, and we’re very interested to see how it works.

Of course, real money does actually change hands. The client company pays CrowdFlower, and Gambit gets a cut.