Providing an electronic marketplace to facilitate human performance of programmatically submitted tasks

• US 8,306,840 B2
• Filed: 07/27/2009
• Issued: 11/06/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Cohen, Peter D., Sanderson, Daniel A., Seregine, Mikhail, Kiefer, Brett, Goo, Jang Han, Bezos, Jeffrey P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Jeanty, Romain
• Application Number:
  US12/510,192
• Publication Number:
  US 20090287532A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,198 Days
• Field of Search: 705/7.21
• US Class Current: 705/7.21
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5005 to service a request
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06311 Scheduling, planning or task assignment for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063112 Skill-based matching of a person or a group to a task
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

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.

Claims

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.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the available task has associated compensation for satisfactory performance of the task, and wherein the method further comprises providing at least a portion of the associated compensation to a human task performer who performs the task.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the indicated criteria for the available task include one or more associated required qualifications of a human performer of the task, and wherein the one or more human task performers who are able to satisfactorily perform the task based on the indicated criteria are each identified as having associated qualifications that satisfy the required qualifications.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the configured computing device provides an electronic marketplace to which multiple task requesters submit available tasks to be performed and to which multiple task performers provide results from performance of available tasks.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the available task is a qualifying examination such that a human task performer who performed the task receives an associated qualification that allows that human task performer to perform other tasks.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the receiving of information about the available task from an executing program of a task requester is based on submission by the task requester of a new task that is distinct from any existing available tasks.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the computer-readable medium is a memory of the configured computing device.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the contents are instructions that when executed program the configured computing device to perform the method.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 wherein the contents include a data structure for use in facilitating performance of tasks, the data structure comprising multiple entries that each correspond to a task and that each contain indications of at least one qualification of a human task performer for the task and of associated compensation for performance of the task.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein at least some of the entries of the data structure each further contain one or more additional indications related to the task for the entry, the additional indications for the entry including at least one of one or more task requesters who provided the task, one or more task performers who performed the task, a callback mechanism via which to provide results of performance of the task to a program of a task requester, one or more pieces of information for use by a task performer during performance of the task, and one or more pieces of information related to corroboration of one or more of the indicated qualifications for the task.

11. A computing system configured to act as an intermediary to facilitate performance by task performers of tasks submitted by task requesters, comprising:

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.

12. The computing system of claim 11 wherein, for one of the multiple tasks, the one task has associated compensation for satisfactory performance of the one task, and wherein the facilitating of the performance of the multiple tasks by the task fulfillment facilitator system includes providing at least a portion of the associated compensation to a human task performer who performs the one task.

13. The computing system of claim 11 wherein, for one of the multiple tasks, the indicated criteria for the one task include one or more associated required qualifications of a human performer of the one task, and wherein the one or more human task performers to whom the information about the one task is provided are each automatically identified by the task fulfillment facilitator system as having associated qualifications that satisfy the required qualifications.

14. The computing system of claim 11 wherein the task fulfillment facilitator system provides an electronic marketplace to which multiple task requesters submit available tasks to be performed and to which multiple human task performers unrelated to task requesters provide results from performance of tasks submitted by those task requesters.

15. The computing system of claim 11 wherein, for one of the multiple tasks, the one task is a qualifying examination such that a human task performer who performs the one task receives an associated qualification that allows that human task performer to perform other tasks.

16. The computing system of claim 11 wherein, for one of the multiple tasks, the receiving of information about the one task from the executing program of the task requester is based on submission by the task requester of a new task that is distinct from any existing available tasks.

17. The computing system of claim 11 further comprising the application programming interface, the application programming interface being provided by the task fulfillment facilitator system and being configured to allow executing programs of task requesters to submit tasks available to be performed and to allow the executing programs to receive information about results of performance of submitted tasks.

19. The computing system of claim 11 wherein the task fulfillment facilitator system is further configured to receive information from each of multiple users that includes information about qualifications of the user to act as a human task performer, and to register each of the multiple users as being available to act as a human task performer to perform available tasks.

20. The computing system of claim 11 wherein the task fulfillment facilitator system includes software instructions for execution by the at least one processors.

21. The computing system of claim 11 wherein the task fulfillment facilitator system consists of a means for facilitating performance of multiple tasks by, for each of the tasks:

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 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.

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.

22. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

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.

23. The method of claim 22 wherein the available task has associated compensation for satisfactory performance of the task, and wherein the method further comprises providing at least a portion of the associated compensation to a human task performer who performs the task.

24. The method of claim 22 wherein the indicated criteria for the available task include one or more associated required qualifications of a human performer of the task, and wherein the one or more human task performers who are able to satisfactorily perform the task based on the indicated criteria are each identified as having associated qualifications that satisfy the required qualifications.

25. The method of claim 22 wherein the one or more configured computing systems are part of an electronic marketplace to which multiple task requesters submit available tasks to be performed and to which multiple task performers provide results from performance of available tasks.

26. The method of claim 22 wherein the available task is a qualifying examination such that a human task performer who performed the task receives an associated qualification that allows that human task performer to perform other tasks.

27. The method of claim 22 wherein the receiving of information about the available task from an executing program of a task requester is based on submission by the task requester of a new task that is distinct from any existing available tasks.