Google Image Labeler and Tom Sawyer

Posted on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by Frank Roche

I’m on my way to being addicted to Google Image Labeler. Be careful, if you click on that link you may be too. I’m up to 8,800 “points,” but I’m really waiting to get a great partner and move to the head of the “Today’s Top Pairs” list. Here’s how Google describes this “game” that gets people like me to spend 90 seconds at a pop labeling pictures for Google. (Oh, the exquisite Tom Sawyer-ness of it all.)

You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner’s label, you’ll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.

Games work. The Google Image Labeler satisfies a need for Google – they need humans to look at thousands of pictures and label them. They need the wisdom of the masses. And games satisfy a need for people (okay, me) to play. (I wonder if there’s a gender difference in who’s willing to play the game). And like a modern day Tom Sawyer, Google got me to paint a fence…and like it. There might even be an HR lesson or two in there. Need something done? Make it a game.

User Comments

Laura

Sep 5th, 2006

I found Netflix ‘Recommendations’ tool to be similarly engaging. You rate movies you’ve already seen. Then Netflix makes recommendations based on this info. I don’t know if Netflix is using the data I enter in any more generalized way, but it definitely felt like a game. I spent an hour on it the first time I ran into it.
Frank

Sep 5th, 2006

I have to try out Netfilx. I’m still an HBO subscriber, but since The Sopranos seems to run only every year-and-a-half I’ll try it out. And try their “Recommendations” game. Ugh, just what I need, another distraction.