Samasource review by Inspector Jones

I recommend Samasource for enterprise customers. Many companies find the concept of crowdsourcing interesting, but have concerns about quality, management effort and expertise - Samasource resolves many of these.

Samasource provides a fully-managed crowdsourcing solution, used by a number of large enterprise clients. They specialise in “microwork” - breaking work down into small tasks, which can be completed by an individual, as part of a larger project. This is all managed by their team in San Francisco - to minimise your effort, and maximise quality.

Samasource focuses on providing work to women and youth living in poverty. These workers are from countries like India, Kenya, Haiti and Uganda.

What sort of work should you use Samasource for?

Samasource is a great option for:

• Online Research and data mining (from websites, PDF, images, etc.)
• Data categorisation and tagging
• Audio, video, or image transcription

Samasource also provide services to write articles, reviews and other content, and help manage your social media or customer service desk. Typically, these are more advanced tasks, and I recommend you trial the service before moving up to these.

What shouldn't you use Samasource for?

Samasource is not a great option if:

• You have particular confidentiality or security requirements
• You need the lowest price. However, be aware that lowest price is not necessarily best value - Samasource adds overheads, which increase their quality and accuracy
• You need to manage your workers directly - instead, Samasource will manage the workers on your behalf

Recommendations

I recommend Samasource as an enterprise alternative to crowdsourcing. Samasource provide a partnership - with stronger management of crowdsourced services, and a hands-on approach. It may also assist with your Corporate Social Responsibility, providing work to women and youth living in poverty.

If you are considering Samasource, I recommend you start with a serious project that can be split into many small, low-risk tasks - like online research, data cleansing, or audio transcription.