The Extraordinaries and txteagle: Micro Tasks to Change the World?

One of the interesting trends I'm noticing is companies and nonprofits trying to disaggregate small tasks in order to more efficiently harness dispersed labor through "crowdsourcing."

A recently published Wired blog post profiled Nathan Eagle, an MIT research scientist and entrepreneur living in East Africa and building txteagle, a mobile crowdsourcing company that pays African mobile users to undertake small tasks via their mobile phones. The company (whose tag line is "empowering the largest knowledge workforce on earth,") hopes to build a business around everything from transcription to software localization to search relevancy.

It's interesting that in many ways, txteagle is thinking about the same questions as The Extraordinaries, if their aims are a little bit different. Whereas txteagle is thinking about crowdsourcing with low-cost labor for basic business needs, The Extraordinaries is brainstorming about what small but meaningful services people can provide in their downtime. It's been interesting for me to see how much of The Extraordinaries' brainwaves have had to be dedicated to thinking through just what "meaningful action" means.

They've got some great ideas, but this really is the question for all of the online action platforms. What's the difference between a meaningful, potentially transformational action you can take versus just "signing" another online petition (not that the right petition can't be important as well)? Action platforms will have to answer that question to be successful.

One of the other things that I think is interesting in looking at The Extraordinaries and txteagle in comparative terms is that the represent a spectrum of the way social entrepreneurs are trying to create good. The Extraordinaires seems like it will have a nonprofit or nonprofit-for profit hybrid model and focus on these volunteer actions that anyone can perform, while the social good that txteagle creates will be largely in the workforce they employ (although they do seem to have ideas for a more directly philanthropic component, as well).

I think it's really important that we include socially-minded for profit business driven by or for the bottom of the pyramid in our social entrepreneurship ecosystem. Frankly, I think there's more potential for growth and reinvention there than just about anywhere else.

I'm a huge supporter of both of these projects. As folks can probably tell from this blog, I'm hugely excited about the power of technology to bridge divides and create new opportunities, and I'm looking forward to seeing what both of these startups bring to the table in the next few years.