Latest From Second Life Creator: Crowdsourcing Small Jobs 74
waderoush writes "At Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale led the creation of Second Life, a virtual world with a complex internal economy. Now he's applying some of the same ideas to the real world at Coffee & Power, a hybrid workclub and crowdsourcing marketplace for small jobs. The C&P site (which was itself crowdsourced via another Rosedale project called Worklist) matches sellers and buyers of services from personal shopping to software tutoring. Payments are handled using a virtual currency, and members can meet up to collaborate or deliver services at the C&P offices in San Francisco and Santa Monica. 'Coffee & Power is a tool that asks the question, 'If you had an extra three hours today, how many things could you do?'' Rosedale says. 'We all have a lot of skills that we don't use in our day jobs.'"
Important figures from article (Score:5, Insightful)
Average length of job: Half a day
Average pay of job: $12
So if you live in China, India, Nigeria, etc. and would love to work for $24 a day, great news! And for those you who live in the first world, well, enjoy the continued outsourcing that's going to have us all living in a goddamned Mad Max dystopia by the end of the century. Buy your Chinese-made shouldpads and dune buggies now.
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Average length of job: Half a day
Average pay of job: $12
That's 12 C$, which leads me to ask 2 important questions:
1) What's the exchange rate between C$ and USD?
2) According to TFA, C&P takes "a 15 percent cut when users convert their C$ into real dollars;" assuming it is not a 1:1 exchange rate (because, if it were, why the need to pay me in fake digital currency?), which end does the 15% come off?
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I think he meant does the guy who buys the C$ pay the 15% or does the guy cashing out the C% pay it? And I'll bet the answer is: both.
From now on use a remote to start you car because unknowingly you just revealed the Amazon and Apple Store business models!
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Was about to post that it's certain rosedale will screw up this too, just like he did for SL.
But i guess the answer to that was easy to notice.
Greed and ignorance in the way of innovation. Again.
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ouch.. i hadn't looked at exchange rates in a while.. last time i got a Canadian money it was 1.50 Canadian = 1 USD
C$ != C$ (Score:2)
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1) What's the exchange rate between C$ and USD?
From the C&P site:
You can also buy C$ for US$1.00 each by using the menu in the upper right by your balance.
assuming it is not a 1:1 exchange rate (because, if it were, why the need to pay me in fake digital currency?)
It is 1:1. They use virtual currency so they don't have to deal with payment processing fees/regulations each time a transaction occurs, only when money is cashed out.
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1) What's the exchange rate between C$ and USD?
From the C&P site:
You can also buy C$ for US$1.00 each by using the menu in the upper right by your balance.
assuming it is not a 1:1 exchange rate (because, if it were, why the need to pay me in fake digital currency?)
It is 1:1. They use virtual currency so they don't have to deal with payment processing fees/regulations each time a transaction occurs, only when money is cashed out.
The price at which currency, especially fake currency, is sold is =/= to exchange rate; for example, I happen to have in my possession a stack of Indian Rupees, which I will gladly sell to you for $1 USD each. That doesn't mean the exchange rate between USD and Rupees [xe.com] is 1:1, it just means I'm a greedy asshole.
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No, but if the government were to agree to sell all Rupees for $1 each and buy Rupees at $0.85, then that does nail down the conversion rate pretty tightly. Furthermore, in the context of the discussion, it means that you are being paid less than $24 for a days worth of work, as no one is going to pay more for $C than C&P does.
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The great idea in Second Life isn't the avatars or 3D graphics, it's a "frictionless microcurrency". Frictionless in that transactions between users have no fees, and microcurrency in that the smallest unit is 0.004 US$. The great failure of Linden Lab (owners of Second Life) is not realizing that frictionless money has huge potential outside their little virtual world.
Meanwhile, what does Rosedale come up with? A new kind of currency with 15% overhead, even more than credit cards and PayPal charges. Al
It isn't the outsourcing (Score:2)
It's the 20 year de-leveraging which will do it. At the end of it, $12 will be a good days pay.
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Average pay for moonlight job: $12
Average pay for wasting time on the internet instead: $0
Its better than a kick in the balls.
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2) Cost of hiring some other dufus to do the boring parts my day job while he slacks off from his day job: $12/hr
3) PMy net pay for wasting time on the internet instead: $38/hr. PROFIT!
1) Average pay at your day job: $50/hr
2) Cost to your boss of hiring some other dufus to do the job while he slacks off from his day job: $12/hr
3) Your boss's net expense: -$38
4) Your net pay - $0
I hate this argument (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, you know what? I like living in a world where there's more to life than endless toil. You think the rich bastards that shoved this crap down your throat in grade school work 70 hours a week? If you do, you haven't been paying attention. Here's an idea: Pay people enough to make a difference in their lives and see how much interest you get.
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The reason the average job is $12 is because thats what the people doing the work are willing to accept.
There is also little correlation between "Average job is $12" Average time for a job is 4 hours". A lot of 10 minute $10 jobs and a few 100 hour $6000 jobs would be enough to get those two averages - except the average $/hr is $60, not $3. I'm sorry you failed at maths.
ps: I'm a white collar IT worker. I don't accept
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How is the IT market in New Zealand? I've always wanted to visit there, and wouldn't mind working there 6-12 months to do it.
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Who said this was a replacement for a real job? Average pay for moonlight job: $12 Average pay for wasting time on the internet instead: $0 Its better than a kick in the balls.
That's assuming time on the internet is "wasted". I consider it leisure time, which has a non-zero value to me. If I really wanted to I could get a part-time job at a coffee shop to use up these hours where I'm not at work, but I value non-work hours more than I value the $40 I'd get doing a shift at Tim Horton's for the evening. There's more to life than making money.
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If you were to pick and choose which shifts you felt like doing at Tim Horton's, you'd get fired pretty quick. If you decide not to pick contract, no one cares.
Some people enjoy doing constructive/challenging and getting paid for it may just be a bonus. Work is not supposed to be unenjoyable.
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Its what? :P
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Great Idea for the GOP (Score:2)
The GOP will certainly be able to support this, since then they will be able to add all the virtual people to the unemployment statistics.
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Average length of job: Half a day
Average pay of job: $12
Yeah it's like those people in Extreme Couponing on tv, they get 500$ worth of grocery for 25$, but they spend 45 hours finding, cutting and sorting coupons to get that. Working full time would bring at least that much money and possibly give more growth opportunity than sorting coupons in a big Excel file.
Unemployment (Score:2)
Working full time would bring at least that much money
Provided that employers are offering a position for more than $10.56 after taxes, which would be closer to $13.00 per hour. That's not guaranteed until U.S. BLS unemployment figures drop a couple more points.
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mini wage and the IRS (Score:2)
I can see this ending badly. Also I think by law they must pay in real cash as well.
also a contractors can mess up that get billed (Score:2)
the costs and then some lets say to make a typo in a web app and they clam it broke there sever and they want to you buy them a new one.
Or on the other side it trun's out the system is very under powered to start with and it can't do the work load they want to code for them and then they come asking for all new system all at your cost as the code you added made there side go down.
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Ask any Evangelical Christian preacher, and he'll confirm it. Rich people have more money because God loves them more, and has blessed them with prosperity. It's called "Prosperity Theology" [wikipedia.org] and it's the basis for evangelical Christianity in America today.
Slaving for God and for Riches? I am disappoint. (Score:2)
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Just because someone appears on TV more often than other people does not make that person representative of the norm.
I disagree; when someone appears on TV a lot, it means that they're getting a lot of funding from somewhere. With TV preachers, that generally means lots and lots of devoted followers sending in bags of money on the promise that God will reward them tenfold. It isn't cheap to be on TV, have your own channel, have a private jet to fly you to Africa and back frequently, etc. And with the way
Crowdfunding adding features to FOSS projects (Score:1)
Was an idea I had, well someone beat me to it. :-P Well my idea was to have a company that would serve client requests for features in various FOSS projects but this idea is cooler.
Kickstarter (Score:2)
Well my idea was to have a company that would serve client requests for features in various FOSS projects
Like Kickstarter?
Congratulations, you've invented virtual day labor (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this, in any fashion, different than a landscaping contractor rolling up to a street corner and spot-hiring half a dozen undocumented workers for an enjoyable day of grass-mowing and leaf-blowing at 7 bucks an hour?
What could possibly go wrong?
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>
What could possibly go wrong?
Spammers from third world countries.
Just-in-time disposable employees (Score:5, Interesting)
Rent-a-Coder, Mechanical Turk, Freelancer.com, and now this.
Manpower, Inc. is one of the US's largest "employers".
unions (Score:3)
This is why we need more of them and more workers rights. Freelancer / contractor also need more rights there is a lot of abuse. The cable industry is real bad with that. Also there is more stuff like change backs where you can have funds taken away from your after doing the job.
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Posting anonymously to protect myself:
I once interviewed with "IDT Energy". They're a power/gas reseller in NY and NJ. Regulations went away, they buy power in bulk, and they "save you money" supposedly. This is rarely the case for most people. They got hit over the head by the NY government for fucking things up a lot.
Long story short, training consisted of high-pressure sales tactics. Pay was about $350 a week, but you're looking at 70-90 hour weeks. Oh, and you didn't work for the company, you were an "i
freelancer.com for hipsters (Score:2)
because, hey, you know? freelancer.com just doesnt have enough 'passion' involved.
Great idea, but not original. (Score:2)
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Disclaimer: Not Trolling (Score:1)
Or its just me!
I have a question (Score:2)
What, did they change celestial mechanics and the day is now 27 hours?
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Clearly your just not working enough hours. You should give up on sleeping so much... sleep is for the poor.
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An average of 50,000 people at any given moment (it varies by time of day). About half a million regular users. That's probably more than Slashdot.
mad skillz (Score:1)
this is great, of-course for local jobs this will pretty quickly degenerate into cheapest bj proposals given what the majority of the people's skillz are.
Tax (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what the IRS, state tax boards, various employment/workplace regulatory bodies and such are going to have to say about this... they're going to want their cut of the action.
I also suspect the Treasury Department may have something to say about virtual currencies being used to pay for real-world goods and services. This ain't Second Life scripted wang-doodles we're talkin' about here. Scrip is a legal minefield.
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I pay the IRS for my Second Life net earnings just like any other small business. The key thing to understand is that it becomes real money at the point Linden Lab/Second Life cashes me out to PayPal. Anything before that is just internal data on their servers. I also get to deduct all my legitimate expenses, like internet connection, depreciation on my PC.
As far as labor laws, the question is are Coffee and Power service providers (the people doing the work) an employee of anyone under government rules?
This reminds me of Indian slum economies... (Score:3, Interesting)
In the USA (and most traditional economies):
The retailer contacts a supplier who contacts a handbag company who contacts a factory in China who makes the bags and ships them to the retailer. For better or for worse, it's Capitalism in action where fancy bags come from big factories across the ocean.
In the slums of Mumbai:
The retailer contacts a supplier who goes into the slums and talks to poor women in their shacks and asks them to make him a couple bags each. He goes from shack to shack and picks up the two-three bags and gives the women a tiny payment. Then he goes to another neighborhood and distributes the bags to a dozen other ladies who stitch the patterns onto the bag. Someone else picks them all up or tells the ladies to bring the bags to another shack where they are counted and the women are paid a few cents each. The supplier ships the bags to the retailer. For better or for worse, it's crazy decentralized unregulated and unregulatable chaos Capitalism where fancy bags come from a hundred poor living rooms.
At least in the Chinese factories, workers are starting to demand better conditions and wages and there are standards and some regulations and standards in place. In India the workers get paid next to nothing because they are all working in their homes and don't have any idea who they are working for and aren't employees - work on contract only - and don't know any of their fellow workers so they can't unionize and demand better wages, and they work in their homes deep in slums so there is absolutely no regulation.
My point is that this kind of small crowdsourced job idea reminds me of the Indian model, and I don't like it.
Feel free to disagree though, what else is
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This new service might be useful for a few one-time scripts by someone with more experience than the customer, but real business value requires integration & continuity. Etc.
Things will get more interesting if these guys can introduce an "OpenCEO" product. Why pay for high-priced execs when you can download the equivalent for free?
Hey, need your help! (Score:1)
Here's An Idea (Score:1)