Zaarly Opens Up The Goods and Services Marketplace

Online “quest board” Zaarly is a neat way to get your overwhelming tasks done with the help of your fellow man. It operates similar to Milk.ly in that people who desire help will post their task on the site’s collaborative crowdmap, and other users who choose to help will get paid the listed amount for it.

I like apps like this that crowdsource small tasks to local help. It’s a get way to enhance both local economies and communities, and it’s a good opportunity for someone who’s a bit of a specialist to take on some relevant jobs and show their town what they can do.

This is why I’m excited to see what comes out of Zaarly’s new “Zaarly Anywhere” API. The update would refocus the app on products in addition to tasks. For example, if you were browsing Pinterest and saw a really great carved wooden chair, the Zaarly API would give you the option of posting a task asking local craftspeople to make a similar chair for you. If you see one you like, you pay the price, and the chair of your dreams is in production without you ever leaving your seat.

I see a deep well that this technology could draw from. The advent of sites like Etsy has made us all too aware that there are talented artists and producers literally right down the block, and I’m sure they’d love another opportunity to showcase (and sell!) their skills. And I can already imagine this will have some impact on the tech support / computer repair industries if it catches on; people will stop using these services once they realize their neighbor’s kid will do it in half an hour for a fraction of the price.

Personally, I would love for applications like Zaarly to create some sort of money-free economy where people simply trade help for other help. But until then, getting a few bucks for helping someone set up their LinkedIn profile isn’t bad.

Follow-Up: IDThisItem.com Does It Right!

Sometimes, a platform is so useful, so novel, and so well-designed that I have no choice but to write about it multiple times. So when one of the people behind IDThisItem.com sent me a message saying that the invite-only period was over, a quick browse through the site convinced me that this glorious platform absolutely deserves a second look.

The concept behind IDThisItem is simple; sometimes you see something on TV or on the internet that’s awesome. An article of clothing, some artwork, or a well-designed piece of furniture catches your eye and you think, “Alas! If only I knew where to purchase this glorious item, my life would have new meaning and my wife won’t leave me!” IDThisItem saves your marriage by allowing you to post a picture of the item with a short description and have the website’s fantastic community find the item, the designer, and/or where and how to buy it.

It’s very rare to see a start-up like this firing on all cylinders, but IDThisItem absolutely nails it. Their best decision was to emphasize their co-operation with platforms like Pinterest and Tumblr, which are both hugely popular right now. Crowdsourcing initiatives work best when they actively seek a relevant audience, and IDThisItem has done that perfectly by actively seeking an audience from these websites. It’s not uncommon to see the typical account on these websites chock-full of interesting examples of fashion and design that may not be available at your local Target.

In addition to knowing its audience, IDThisItem knows how to design a platform, too. The sign-up process is super minimal, and can be done by linking Twitter or Facebook. Submitting an item to be identified is similarly a snap, and the community fills many requests within 48 hours. Especially useful is the option to list a budget for the item in question. Rounding out the site are some simple community features, like an aggregated score for each member that tells how helpful they are, and personal “walls” for interaction. The only flaw I can find (which isn’t even a flaw yet) is that as the site grows in popularity, the “Art & Design” and “Other” categories may become too broad, and could benefit from some specialization.

In summary, anyone who’s fashion-minded, online-shopping-savvy, or has a really good photographic memory should sign up for IDThisItem immediately and save themselves some trouble down the road when they see a cute pair of jeans on Jersey Shore that they just have to have.

“ID This Item” Crowdsources to Help You Find, Purchase That Cute Top You Saw One Time on Tumblr

It’s happened to the best of us. You’re on your favorite picture-sharing website. You spot an article of clothing on an attractive model, think “Psh, I could wear that better than them!” and then promptly lose interest because you can’t find where to purchase the damn thing. Pinterest and Tumblr are great for sharing pictures, but when it comes to the details and source data of the image, often you’re left without the slightest hint. So for the aspiring internet fashionista who wishes to mimic these styles, IDthisitem.com swoops in to save the day.

It’s a pretty simple crowdsourcing model that we’ve seen in similar forms before: person posts item in question, thousands of pairs of eyes see it, one of them says “It’s X item available at Y.com,” correct answers are rewarded, rewards buy prizes… by-the-books crowdsourcing here. The site isn’t breaking ground in innovation, just providing a solid service that can definitely be strengthened by applying crowdsourcing. As an added bonus, this is the sort of subject matter that lends itself well to an online community. ID This Item could find itself with a very strong fan base if this platform proves worthy.

So far, results look promising. The site is invitation-only for another week or so, so I unfortunately couldn’t see inside. But if we’re to believe the Twitter feed, ID This Item is producing quite a few satisfied customers, who all express gratitude with some version of “omg thank you” (triple exclamation points optional). Sign up if this is your sort of thing, and let me know if it’s a dynamo or a dud in the comments.

Focus In: Fixing a Flawed Campaign

As an editor, there is nothing I love more than encountering a total mess of a project and having to figure out why it went wrong and how to fix it. So imagine my delight when I ran across Business Today’s scathing analysis of the failed crowdsourcing attempts of various Indian online clothing outlets to design marketable products.

The Complaint: The submissions these sites receive are largely useless, according to the people running the sites. They’re “amateurish”, or a movie slogan with one word changed, or are simply designs stolen from other outlets and submitted as original content. Site administrators claim they can use only a very small percentage of the designs, and some of them go so far as to say that they reject almost all designs; their crowdsourcing campaigns are simply for show.

The Problem: Lack of compartmentalization, lack of barrier to entry. Many of the site admins have said it themselves, in this article, in as many words; the designs lack a common thread that gives the outlet an identity, and they see no good way to filter the submissions they get to weed out the bad ones. Simply put, this is the crowdsourcing equivalent of trying to catch a tiger by putting a fence around an entire jungle. Sure, technically, you’ve caught a tiger. But you’ve also caught a million other non-tigers, and you have no good way of extracting the tiger from those things.

The Solution: You’re gonna have to increase your focus a bit, guys. This is a dual-pronged process, since you need both better submissions and a better vetting process. Fortunately, there’s a lesser-known site called Threadless that got the process right, and you can take a lot away from their approach. Form a community instead of a competition to inspire collaboration and attract talent. Plug your platform on artistically inclined sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, deviantART, and Etsy. And for goodness sake, let the customers help decide which designs to choose! It practically guarantees sales; by the time they approve a design, it’s already got hundreds of users who have seen it, liked it, and indicated their interest in purchasing the final product.

Can you envision other ways these flailing campaigns can reach their goals? Let me hear it in the comments!