Crowd Guru
Other Microtask
Germany-based microtask platform. Crowd Guru does not offer a “self service” platform; all projects are managed by an employee.
Terms of Service
Rejection:negative rating Change:negative rating Warranty:positive rating Client Contact:positive rating Worker Contact:positive rating
Rejection:negative rating
Change:negative rating
Warranty:positive rating
Client Contact:positive rating
Rejection:positive rating
Platform Overview
Crowd Guru is a Berlin-based “managed services” microtask platform. That is, it is a platform for microtasks where clients cannot simply post tasks directly to the platform. Rather, clients work with platform operators, who turn clients’ projects into tasks suitable for crowd workers to complete via the platform.
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Platform History
The company was founded in 2008 as “SMS Guru”, with a different business model: the crowd answered questions submitted via SMS. With the emergence of smartphones the business model was changed. The company was renamed to Crowd Guru in 2011 and changed its specialization to crowdsourcing.
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Business Model
Crowd Guru offers “full service” for clients: posting of tasks to the platform, management of the crowdsourcing workflow, quality control, communication with crowd workers, and delivery of the final product is handled by operations managers who are employees of the company. It is not possible for clients to post tasks directly to the platform.
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Worker Classification
Workers are self employed.
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Jobs and Clients
- Classification, for example of clothing
- Content moderation, for example review of user profiles
- Text creation, for example for online shops
- Machine learning applications, for example annotation of images for pattern and object recognition
- Research, for example looking up business addresses
- Tagging, for example of products and services
- Data cleaning, for example for digitalization of product catalogues
- Lead generation
Example Clients
Visual Meta; Sixt Rent a Car; Idalab; Scondoo GmbH; Trusted Shops; Sodexo.
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Work Process
According to the Crowd Guru website, the work process have five main steps:
- The client gives Crowd Guru the task
- A Crowd Guru project manager turns it into microtasks for distribution to workers
- Workers do the microtasks
- Crowd Guru checks the quality and returns the result to the client
- The client pays per task after the work is done
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Worker Reviews
We have not yet surveyed workers on this platform.
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Ability to Refuse Payment Rejection:negative rating
Nonpayment is possible if the time limit is exceeded.Comment from the platform operator:
Each microtask receives a large time limit. If the job is completed within the time limit, the money is automatically booked to the worker's account. Money is only partially deducted if the worker has done something deceptive — for example, submitted plagiarized work. If this happens the worker is always notified and they have the opportunity to clarify the issue in direct discussion with us.
Nonpayment occurs very rarely. Small mistakes (for example typos or text style) are corrected by our in-house quality control team; in these cases the worker receives their payment as normal and without deductions. They also receive tips about how to improve their work in the future. Between March and May 2017 only nine workers on our platform received partial payment deductions as a result of submitting plagiarized work.
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Change to Terms of Service: Change:negative rating
Can be changed unilaterally by the platform at any time. Effect on projects in progress is unclear. -
Warranty Warranty:positive rating
Worker is allowed to improve work if it does not meet the satisfaction of the client. -
Contact with Employers Client Contact:positive rating
No prohibition. -
Contact with Workers Rejection:positive rating
No prohibition.
