This is brilliant! If you’ve ever used Google Images, you know searching is less than perfect. That’s because many images found on the net lack good meta data or are on pages that are only partially relevant to the image. So how can Google enlist the help of the masses to improve the relavancy of search results? Offer a simple “game”, award some points and pair partners up from across the word. Check out the Google ImageLabeler app. In a nutshell, partners are presented an image and each type in their own list of words related to the image. Partner’s can’t see the other person’s list until the two minute time limit is reached. The object is to eventually match on a word. When that happens, the team is awarded some points. The more you play, the more points you earn and the more relevant meta data Google has for the images. And like “Who’s line is it anyway?”, the points are pretty much meaningless…no prizes, just the satisfaction that you’ve burned the better part of the day providing free labor to Google. Simply brilliant.
Try it out and let me know what you think.
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