[ANNOUNCE] CoinWorker.com beta - earn bitcoin in minutes via tasks in browser

[WargeGeoshington]

Hello!

I've made a new service where anyone can earn bitcoin in a web browser.

You enter your payment address, perform analytic tasks that a paying company needs completed, and receive bitcoin as a reward soon afterward. (In minutes, when all is working.)

You could think of it as mining with your own mind, rather than a specialized GPU.

http://CoinWorker.com

I initially announced it on the Newbie board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60769.0;all) a couple weeks ago. There was good feedback and I worked through a few issues, and now would  love for more people to try it out and let me know what they think.

Thanks!

{Warge @Geoshington

[coin_toss]

gave it a try...but there was no tasks available

[nhodges]

gave it a try...but there was no tasks available

I was able to get right into a task. Pretty neat!

[WargeGeoshington]

gave it a try...but there was no tasks available

It's possible the back-end provider varies the offerings by region/browser, so everyone may not see the same set of tasks. That's my guess why you wouldn't have seen any, while others (and my automatic poll which feeds the 'Tasks Available' indicator on the homepage) see tasks.

I'm taking the steps to get a larger variety of tasks, and some might even be targeted at speakers of other languages. I'll update this thread and the @CoinWorking twitter account whenever a big change like that occurs.

{Warge

[someguy123]

In the UK: No tasks available here...
Also what's going on here... looks like somebody has been cheating the system:

[nhodges]

In the UK: No tasks available here...
Also what's going on here... looks like somebody has been cheating the system:

Those aren't txid hashes ... those are wallet hashes, lol.

[WargeGeoshington]

In the UK: No tasks available here...
Also what's going on here... looks like somebody has been cheating the system:

Sorry there's not yet any tasks for your region.

Regarding those earnings, rates and totals of activity are being watched for anything suspicious. Note that the 'earned' times aren't exactly when tasks were completed, but when reporting catches up. (It's also the case that if there are reporting hiccups, several tasks' earnings could be rolled into one line: for example, even with only 22-point tasks, you might see a 66-point or larger earnings report under certain network conditions.)

So a burst of apparently super-human earnings may not in fact be any sort of cheating. Still, I welcome reports of anything that appears anomalous. (Thanks again if you are also the person who tweeted this log to @CoinWorking.) Part of the idea of having the logs in the open, like the Bitcoin blockchain itself, is to enable a public discussion of the possibilities.

(Depending on the level of interest and any issues that come up, there could be things like minimum delays/thresholds to be paid, probationary periods for new addresses, a more involved sign-up, and so forth in the future. But for as long as possible I'd like to run with the pure approach: "I only need your address and your thinking!")

{Warge

[WargeGeoshington]

After a long pause, there are again new tasks available. (However, regions outside North America still might not see them.) Currently on offer...

(12 points) Would you buy this item?

"Imagine you could see what people are shopping for online. Your task is to decide if you would buy an item from a list of search results."

(13 points) How relevant are these items?

"In this task you will be asked to judge several items for how well they match a given search query. To do well at this task you will want to use all the available information displayed in the search and the product listing to decide whether the item matches the intent of the query."

There's a good chance of more task diversity soon as well.

{Warge

[kiba]

Who's paying for these work anyway?

[WargeGeoshington]

Who's paying for these work anyway?

The tasks come via CrowdFlower, a San Francisco-based company that specializes in crowdsourcing... but they originate with other companies/projects/researchers/individuals.

CrowdFlower lists Microsoft, Harvard University, eBay, Random House, AT&T, and a bunch of tech startups on their 'featured customers' page:

http://crowdflower.com/customer

It's not revealed who the purchaser is behind any one task-set, so I have no idea which entities are responsible for tasks that have been offered so far at CoinWorker.

{Warge

[kiba]

These jobs seems highly difficult for me to do. Any chance that you will have easier work for bitcoiners to do?

[WargeGeoshington]

These jobs seems highly difficult for me to do. Any chance that you will have easier work for bitcoiners to do?

There's no way to predict in advance what tasks will be offered. Most tasks that I've seen have involved a lot of search result or text interpretation. I expect there will some that are more visual in nature or involve writing as well.

Also, at one point during early testing I saw a large batch of tasks that appeared to be in German, and other regional/language targeting is said to be possible from the backend.

{Warge

[throwaway]

Suggestion: an option to delay payment until a certain amount is reached.

[foggyb]

Suggestion: an option to delay payment until a certain amount is reached.

No kidding!

24 micro payments? yuck.

[WargeGeoshington]

Suggestion: an option to delay payment until a certain amount is reached.

That's definitely under consideration.

During original testing, every task was paid individually... no matter how small.

Now, payments are batched (currently every 20 minutes) to minimize network transaction count/costs. So there will be some combination of smaller amounts into a single payment for busy users.

What don't you like about many small quick payments? What threshold would you suggest?

I might go to a system where balances under a certain threshold must reach a certain age (perhaps up to one full day) before being paid. But, balances over a certain threshold would be paid as soon as possible. If that were the system, what do you think would be a good threshold?

{Warge

[WargeGeoshington]

New stuff just added:

• A new 'Extended Address' option, which lets you mix your address with a password to prevent any possible interference with your work history by others entering the same address. (There's been no evidence of that happening, but just in case!) See http://coinworker.com/extended for details.
• A Help/FAQ page: http://coinworker.com/help

And, there are now over 20 kinds of tasks available, ranging from flagging adult images (3 points) to "Search for terms and record the search results" (32 points).

{Warge

[arsenische]

I like it! Spent ~15 minutes, got ~0.03 btc I know it is unpredictable, but still... what's the expected average hourly rate?

[WargeGeoshington]

I like it! Spent ~15 minutes, got ~0.03 btc I know it is unpredictable, but still... what's the expected average hourly rate?

Hard to say -- people seem to vary a lot. For tasks I've tried, and formed an idea in my head how fast (and still accurate) that I think I could get with practice, I've seen other addresses complete them 2x faster. Most of the tasks I've never tried.

Some have keyboard shortcuts (arrows/numbers) that are toggled on with the 'T' key, and I think with practice some people just get 'in the zone'.

{Warge

[foggyb]

But, balances over a certain threshold would be paid as soon as possible. If that were the system, what do you think would be a good threshold?

{Warge

Can you add on option to set the threshold ourselves?

If not, I'd like to see a threshold of 0.2 BTC.

[Wordlet]

I ran into a task (32 pts) where it had part 1,2,3 and then the same exact part 1,2,3 right after. Is that an accuracy test or..? I'm using chrome if that's relavent. Also another task's instructions, I think a 'is this a good image advert' one, tried to imbed a pdf as an image and it didn't work so I had to view source on it.

I also think it's a bit weird to automatically send you on to the next task without telling you. People like knowing they completed something before they have to start the next task.

I also think it'd be cool (and good business) to have a leaderboard like system where you show "Look at all the BTC other people are earning!" so more people get involved.

You could use the new 'sign message' feature in .6.0 to have people sign a message saying "I own this public address and coinworker.com can use it to identify me" and then use the verification address as a password or something, and let them use that to set their payment threshold.