Providing an electronic marketplace to facilitate human performance of programmatically submitted tasks
First Claim
1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium whose contents configure 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:
- receiving, by the configured computing device, 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, by the configured computing device, 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, by the configured computing device, the received results via the defined programmatic interface to a program of the task requester.
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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.
106 Citations
27 Claims
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1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium whose contents configure 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, by the configured computing device, 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, by the configured computing device, 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, by the configured computing device, the received results via the defined programmatic interface to a program of the task requester. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. 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 (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21)
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18. The computing system of 17 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.
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22. A computer-implemented method, comprising:
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receiving, by one or more configured computing systems, 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, by the one or more configured computing systems, 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, by the one or more configured computing systems, the received results via the defined programmatic interface to a program of the task requester. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26, 27)
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Specification