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Fancy Hands tries to let you delegate simple tasks to other humans
Here's an interesting business model: Pay $30/month, and get 15 "tasks" that you can delegate to real, live, human beings who will do them for you. That's what Fancy Hands offers, and ReadWriteWeb seems quite pleased with the service. As you can see in the screenshot above, the tasks can be quite complex. The Fancy Hands site claims that you can send tasks such as:
- "Send a car to my house tomorrow to take me to JFK"
- "Reservations for four at Momofuku at 7pm tonight"
- "Send me all the product reviews for [competitor] product from the last 3 months"
- "I just moved. Schedule times for cable and phone companies to come out."
Amazon's Mechanical Turk service offers a similar service, but it is very clear on the employees front, with a large "MAKE MONEY" link right on the front page. So... what do you think? Where does Fancy Hands get the employees, and who are they?
Comments
8
Subscribe to commentsAndyApr 19th 2010 10:42AM
When I read this I can't help but think that there wouldn't be that many people that would actually use all 15 tasks every month. Even if they did, I suspect that mostly they would be small very easy tasks that take next to no time like booking a taxi, restaurant etc.
True if people were paying $30 and requesting 15 more time consuming tasks then the business model would not hold, but if people don't use all 15 tasks, or tasks are quick and simple then they could be making quite a decent profit.
mahApr 19th 2010 11:56AM
Erez, you love to scare people with your articles, don't you?
It seems that the answers to your questions could easily be provided if you emailed the company. Of course, if you tried this already and failed to reach them, that might only lend credence to your supposition. As it is, you simply made up a worst case scenario and you're sticking to it...
Erez ZukermanApr 19th 2010 12:46PM
Wow, thanks Michael... Did you notice that over the past 30 days, I have written around 50 posts? Please tell me, out of these, how many were "alarmist"? I remember exactly two, out of which I actually took one back (meaning, retracted what I said). And I still support the other one.
If you don't know which these are, then you really haven't been keeping track as well as you say. And even these are two (one) out of 50. How is that "loving to scare people"?
If you see any others, do tell. Really. I'm all ears.
As for the subject at hand here -- yes, I think it _is_ a problem when a company says nothing about its empoyees. It's a privacy concern, and it's just plain odd. Heck, what if I want to work there? Are they not taking any applications (try and find out on their site)? Yes, that is strange, no matter which way you look at it.
mahApr 19th 2010 1:03PM
@Erez Zukerman: Calm down, calm down... I don't claim to keep up all so well. My assessment is derived from the fact that the last alarmist post I remember reading was one your wrote. My first line about your loving to scare people should have been taken in jest, but I suppose that is one of the faults of this medium.
I agree it is kind of strange (to say the least) that there is no hiring link, but it's hardly a privacy concern. In fact, if the proprietor only hires people he knows and trusts, that's probably safer than letting any old joe apply. Instead of conjuring images of sweatshops of personal assistants, you could just ask.
חג םמח
mahApr 20th 2010 2:07AM
@mah: don't type when drunk, your spelling suffers.
F-ZeroApr 19th 2010 1:13PM
I think the other issue is also quality of service and security. There is no way they have quality assurance and no way they're going to be held liable for anything since (I'm assuming?) this isn't a service under contract. How can they be held accountable for anything?
What happens when they can't get you that restaurant booking for you? Or you're dissatisfied that you didn't get the table by the window?
PeterApr 20th 2010 3:47AM
to answer your question about who works there, this http://twitter.com/marciamanne person seem to work @ fancyhands.
catglassJul 5th 2010 12:28AM
Just signing up for now. Like your site.