Crowdsourcing apps like Streetspotr provide micro-jobs that, ideally – thanks to smartphones and tablets – you can even do on the way to university. Sounds too good to be true? A day of digital scavenger hunt through Berlin.
I am afraid of the future. Before the job market, real life. I still prefer to float through life in my little bubble full of books and red wine. But at some point it has to burst and I land hard on the earth. I do not want that. I want to be prepared.
So I download the app Streetspotr onto my tablet. Thanks to this, I can take on micro jobs, tasks that pay a few euros. Little reward, little risk, no fall, perfect, I can't imagine a softer introduction to real life. Create an account – and off you go.
A map shows where the money is on the street in my area. I choose a task, a late-night purchase, 50 meters from my apartment. The description says that someone wants to set up a distribution list with super bargains for all kiosks in Berlin and urgently needs up-to-date contact details. I can do this – and earn two euros per store.
The young man in the kiosk is suspicious at first: phone number, email address? No, you don't have that here. Hm, and what about the boss's contact details? Yes, but he won't come until the evening. Damn. The dream of the quick two euros lying on the street on my way to the subway is over for now. But I was prepared for setbacks - so I continued on the scavenger hunt to the next kiosk.
The swarm of the Streetspotr community that carries out such tasks has already grown into a veritable colony of around 325,000 users. Dorothea Utzt is the queen bee in the middle, delegating her drones. She co-founded Streetspotr in 2011 and is now planning to expand across Europe. Crowdsourcing, a hybrid of crowd and outsourcing, is becoming increasingly popular. “People who are flexible and tech-savvy fit our concept perfectly,” she says. Around 100,000 students have registered with Streetspotr, making up a good third of the entire community. The swarm of hard-working helpers buzzes through the streets, checking displays, taking photos of house facades, checking opening times and menus - or, like me, interviewing kiosk employees.
I look for the next destination on my map. Walk in, and lo and behold, what do I see emblazoned on the counter? A telephone. And the employee is also enthusiastic about the idea of the distributor. The problem: The kiosk does not have an email address. But in his eagerness, he promises to set one up today, which he can then send to me via text message. I'm excited and take action. A mistake. After twelve hours the job expires and I still haven't received a message. The next two euros – gone.
But no reason to give up, maybe I just got the hard jobs. In order to get really lucrative jobs, you first have to work your way up in the Streetspotr community and collect points.
The problem: These points only get me up on Streetspotr, but there are more app providers of this type - but no cross-platform rating system. This would create a classic competitive situation: providers would have to fight for the best users, offer them higher wages or find more exciting jobs.
There is one main reason why it hasn't come to this yet: every crowdsourcing app is different. With some you can sit at home and type up business cards, for example, with others you can go digital micro-jobbing around the city.
In addition to Streetspotr, providers such as Fiverr, Clickworker, Appjobber and Mechanical Turk from Amazon are vying for the busy bees. And Uber, Airbnb, Helpling and Favor also belong to the digital labor market in the broadest sense - they give many people a new way of earning money. You quickly end up in a debate between flexibility and security. On the one hand, there are technology enthusiasts who declare the 20th century job market with permanent positions to be dead. On the other hand, unions that want to introduce rules and guarantees to represent the interests of workers who earn their wages mainly on the Internet.
On my scavenger hunt through Berlin, I change my priorities: it's not quick money that's important to me now, but points. Fame in the community, a high score and the good jobs will definitely fall into the app. Near a friend, my map shows me two spots that are right next to each other. I'm supposed to find out whether there are still kiosks (again!) at the addresses given. So I'm off. A communicative shop owner has set up his kebab skewer in one, and a hip organic shop has set up shop in the other. I do my duty: photograph the front of the house twice, digest the crash course on gentrification, that's it.
At the end of the day I didn't even earn enough money for a beer after work, but I worked my way up the virtual career ladder and felt like a scavenger hunter in elementary school again. Real life, so to speak, only in the 'soft edition'.
Crowdsourcing apps like Streetspotr provide micro-jobs that, ideally – thanks to smartphones and tablets – you can even do on the way to university. Sounds too good to be true? A day of digital scavenger hunt through Berlin.
