PROVIDING AN ELECTRONIC MARKETPLACE TO FACILITATE HUMAN PERFORMANCE OF PROGRAMMATICALLY SUBMITTED TASKS
First Claim
1. A method in a computing system for providing an electronic marketplace that acts as an intermediary to facilitate purchasing and selling human-generated answers to questions, the method comprising:
- for each of multiple users unaffiliated with the electronic marketplace, receiving information from the user regarding availability of the user to act as a human task performer, the received information including current qualifications of the user related to performing tasks, and registering the user at the electronic marketplace as an available human task performer;
in response to each of multiple tasks submissions that are each received from an application program of a task requester via a programmatic interface of the electronic marketplace to make a submitted task available for performance by human task performers unrelated to the task requester, registering the submitted task at the electronic marketplace as being available, each task submission specifying an associated fee and associated qualifications and associated task performance criteria for the task such that the fee is to be paid to a human task performer who has the qualifications and who satisfactorily performs the task by answering a specified question for the task in such a manner as to satisfy the criteria; and
for each of at least some of the registered tasks,providing information about the task to one or more human task performers, the provided information including the specified question for the task;
receiving an answer generated by a human task performer for the specified question of the task; and
when the human task performer who generated the answer has current qualifications matching the associated qualifications for the task and when the associated criteria for the task are satisfied, providing the received answer via the programmatic interface to the application program that submitted the task and providing the associated fee for the task to the task performer,so that application programs can programmatically purchase answers to questions that are provided by human task performers.
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Abstract
A method, system, and computer-readable medium is described for facilitating interactions between task requesters who have tasks that are available to be performed and task performers who are available to perform tasks. In some situations, the tasks to be performed are human performance tasks that use cognitive and other mental skills of human task performers, such as to employ judgment, perception and/or reasoning skills of the human task performers. In addition, in some situations the available tasks are submitted by human task requesters via application programs that programmatically invoke one or more application program interfaces of an electronic marketplace in order to request that the tasks be performed and to receive corresponding results of task performance in a programmatic manner, so that an ensemble of unrelated human agents can interact with the electronic marketplace to collectively perform a wide variety and large number of tasks.
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Citations
99 Claims
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1. A method in a computing system for providing an electronic marketplace that acts as an intermediary to facilitate purchasing and selling human-generated answers to questions, the method comprising:
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for each of multiple users unaffiliated with the electronic marketplace, receiving information from the user regarding availability of the user to act as a human task performer, the received information including current qualifications of the user related to performing tasks, and registering the user at the electronic marketplace as an available human task performer; in response to each of multiple tasks submissions that are each received from an application program of a task requester via a programmatic interface of the electronic marketplace to make a submitted task available for performance by human task performers unrelated to the task requester, registering the submitted task at the electronic marketplace as being available, each task submission specifying an associated fee and associated qualifications and associated task performance criteria for the task such that the fee is to be paid to a human task performer who has the qualifications and who satisfactorily performs the task by answering a specified question for the task in such a manner as to satisfy the criteria; and for each of at least some of the registered tasks, providing information about the task to one or more human task performers, the provided information including the specified question for the task; receiving an answer generated by a human task performer for the specified question of the task; and when the human task performer who generated the answer has current qualifications matching the associated qualifications for the task and when the associated criteria for the task are satisfied, providing the received answer via the programmatic interface to the application program that submitted the task and providing the associated fee for the task to the task performer, so that application programs can programmatically purchase answers to questions that are provided by human task performers. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11-59. -59. (canceled)
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60. A computer-readable medium whose contents enable a computing device to act as an intermediary to facilitate performance by task performers of tasks submitted by task requesters, by performing a method comprising:
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receiving information from an executing program of a task requester about a task that is available to be performed, the information received via a defined programmatic application program interface and indicating one or more criteria for satisfactory performance of the task; providing information about the task to one or more human task performers who are able to satisfactorily perform the task based on the indicated criteria; and after receiving results for the available task based on performance of the task by one or more of the human task performers to whom the information about the task was provided, supplying the received results via the defined programmatic interface to a program of the task requester. - View Dependent Claims (61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70)
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67. (canceled)
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71-76. -76. (canceled)
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77. A method for a computing device of a task requester to use an electronic marketplace of human performance tasks to facilitate performance of available tasks by human task performers, the electronic marketplace having a programmatic interface, the method comprising:
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providing information to the electronic marketplace via the programmatic interface about one or more tasks of a task requester that are available to be performed, the provided information for each of the available tasks indicating one or more required qualifications of a human performer of the task and including associated compensation for satisfactory performance of the task; for each of at least some of the available tasks, after results for the available task are generated from performance of the task by one or more human task performers, receiving the results for the task via the programmatic interface; and when the received results for a task are determined to be satisfactory, causing the associated compensation for the task to be provided to one or more of those human task performers. - View Dependent Claims (78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88)
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89. A computing system configured to act as an intermediary to facilitate performance by task performers of tasks submitted by task requesters, comprising:
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one or more processors; and a task fulfillment facilitator system configured to, when executed by at least one of the one or more processors, facilitate performance of multiple tasks by, for each of the tasks; receiving information from an executing program of a task requester about the task available to be performed, the information received via a defined programmatic application program interface and indicating one or more criteria for satisfactory performance of the task; providing information about the task to one or more human task performers who are qualified to satisfactorily perform the task based on the indicated criteria; and after receiving results based on performance of the available task by one or more of the human task performers to whom the information about the task was provided, supplying the received results via the defined programmatic interface to a program of the task requester. - View Dependent Claims (90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99)
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96. The computing system of 95 further comprising storage configured to store information about each of the submitted tasks that includes an associated reward for satisfactory performance of the task and associated criteria for satisfactory performance of the task.
Specification